


Whistling Past a Graveyard

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 20:29:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 21,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19158409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: Hilda’s the one who must attend parent-teacher events. It’s a blessing and a curse.Or.Hilda’s dalliance with Mary Wardwell—both before and after Lilith’s occupation—is complicated. A whole mess, maybe even.





	1. Chapter 1

Sure, Zelda’s the assertive, aggressive one. She can deliver a heated extemporaneous speech on topics ranging from current politics to the state of good table manners to the usefulness of safety gear in contemporary contact sports, can perform exquisitely in a play, can confront someone who’s wronged them with the most effective ire. 

But she can’t do small talk. Can’t put on a fake smile and nod and acquiesce. Can’t look anything but condescending when she’s trying to look neutral. It’s a special kind of burden granted to women with good posture and certain kinds of faces who also possess certain personality traits and certain innate dispositions.

Hilda gets it. All of it.

She doesn’t mind. She doesn’t mind having to be the one to do most of the casual social labor for them both. It’s not as if Zelda flat refuses. Rather, Zelda is refused because she’s just too much, and she’s too proud to admit it hurts to be rejected in such a way. Hilda gets it, and she doesn’t mind. And anyway, it’s nice to be needed. It’s nice to have a skill. And to be able to bullshit with absolutely anyone, be perceived as nonthreatening enough to be entrusted with strangers’ secrets. Well. That’s a skill maybe one in a hundred has, and she’s glad to have it.

Zelda may be the assertive, aggressive one, but Hilda is the gregarious and accommodating one. Hilda can turn a conversation any way she wants it to go, can make anyone agree with her with enough earnest kindness and good-natured obfuscation. 

Different ends of the extroversion spectrum.

Not only does Hilda not mind, but she also likes this sort of thing. Even if Zelda could contort herself into some watered-down, truncated version of herself that could prosper in an environment where it was all pleasantries and cliches and mundane chit chat, she wouldn’t enjoy it. Hilda, however, does enjoy it. 

She likes the energy. She likes the mystery and challenge of meeting new people. She can listen as well as she can talk and turn what she learns from listening into something she can use later. And Zelda appreciates her for it. They can both stay true to themselves while also meeting and exceeding societal expectations. 

No wonder they’ve stuck together these two hundred years: the benefits of their partnership outweigh the costs.

So, Hilda’s long since been the one to go to parent mixers and meet-the-teacher events.

Hilda’s thinking about this dynamic with her sister as she’s lying nude above the covers of Mary Wardwell’s bed, Mary’s overheated body attempting to cool post-orgasm beside her. Despite Hilda’s being the more approachable of the two, Zelda’s had more lovers, and she wonders now why beautiful, hard-bodied Mary Wardwell wouldn’t have slept with Zelda instead. But she supposes she’s had the opportunity because of her both self-imposed and outwardly appointed position in the family. She supposes she had been better equipped to take the opportunity. She supposes and supposes. It’s always like this but not exactly as like this as it could be. There’s a little more guilt and second-guessing this time, which have led to a little more existential reflection.

Her own post-orgasm brain attempts to piece it all together:

A few years ago, Sabrina had been a freshman in high school. And there had been an event at the beginning of the year. Hilda, per usual, had been the Spellman representative. Regular. Neutral. Ecstatic in its way.

Mary Wardwell, blandly dressed and soft-spoken civics teacher, hadn’t made much of an impression. She had had a homemade trifold—neat, looping cursive and inexpertly illustrated graphics in pen and ink—propped haphazardly on her table. Her penmanship on the cardboard was like a letter from a rural grandmother, but the contents were not details about the weather and gossip about the second-hand store where she volunteered but pertinent information outlining the semester’s units. She had sat with her hands in her lap, clearly anxiously waiting for but clearly not expecting anyone to ask her questions.

Hilda had paid more attention to the bold, loud geometry teacher in the sleeveless magenta blouse. It had already been a little too chilly for a sleeveless blouse, but when a woman had shoulders like that woman had, it was a duty to humanity at large to show them off at any almost-reasonable opportunity.

Last year, at the sophomore version of this same event, there was Mary Wardwell again. Hilda had sort of remembered her on her own but mostly had connected her to Sabrina’s recollections over family dinners of her quiet and polite but impassioned lectures about the ineffectiveness of the electoral college and the architectural beauty of certain county courthouses.

Mary Wardwell had been Sabrina’s favorite teacher last year. So Hilda had paid more attention this year.

And when she had caught sight of the slit in the back of her skirt—it had originally just been a regular slit for range of movement but had obviously accidentally ripped to halfway up her thighs—she had definitely paid more attention.

Mary Wardwell had been Sabrina’s favorite teacher because she cared about her subject matter and her students and had assigned meaningful projects and had been so gentle and kind and had been such an empathetic ear to any problems students wanted to discuss, school-related or not.

Mary Wardwell was quickly becoming Hilda’s favorite teacher because not only was she very obviously a good teacher but also she had really nice legs and didn’t even seem to know it.

At mid term there had been conferences.

Hilda had done her cherished duty and attended.

Mary Wardwell had been teaching sophomore English at the time, in which Sabrina had a 98%. Those A-plus conferences were always Hilda’s favorite—bragging about her exceptional niece, having her own ego stroked about her fine parenting, filling the rest of the time just talking to a well-educated and erudite mortal. But Mary Wardwell’s A-plus conference had been especially enjoyable.

Sophomore English is all sentence diagrams and Julius Caesar and The Great Gatsby. Hilda’s favorites.

They had talked for a long time about the American Dream before another set of parents had appeared over Hilda’s shoulder. Mary had nodded to Hilda before she’d stood to welcome them, and that had been when Hilda had caught sight of those gorgeous legs from the front side.

So Mary Wardwell was a good teacher, could hold a good conversation, had good legs. No more thought necessary. A passing fancy to entice her and inflame her a couple times a year. A safe little fantasy to keep in the pocket of her cardigan to sigh over on a boring afternoon and be soon forgotten but readily remembered if need be on a particularly boring evening.

At the beginning of Sabrina’s junior year, Hilda had attended a luncheon.

It had been a taco buffet, and both Hilda and Mary had gravitated toward the guacamole, their hands brushing as they reached. They had both blushed and quickly parted ways.

Mary Wardwell teaches eleventh grade English.

Junior English is all The Crucible and transcendentalism and southern gothic. Hilda can abide those though they’re not her favorite.

But then conferences had come around.

Hilda had immediately noticed something was off.

Mary Wardwell, now, knew she had nice legs. In fact, she knew she had nice tits, too. And the form-fitting sheath dress had said so. Her hair—previously in a severe bun but now free and full and curly—had said so. She was fairly slinking around, equal parts flirtation and derision. There had been a new haughtiness. There had been a new confidence. The same legs, a different attitude about them. Hilda had been intrigued as much as she had been confused.

Sabrina had a 99%. An A-plus conference was always the best.

“Miss Wardwell,” Hilda had said.

“Hmm?” Miss Wardwell had said.

Hilda had looked at her.

Mary Wardwell, previously, had appeared so unassuming. But now. But now.

Hilda had enjoyed an A-plus conference. But now she was navigating an A-plus conference differently. Because the conferencer was different, somehow. She didn’t get it, but she liked it and went with it.

They had talked about A Rose for Emily and somehow flirted about it. They had talked around The Crucible, both palpably uncomfortable about the subject matter, but still rather flirtatious. They had both rolled their eyes at Thoreau.

Mary Wardwell still was a good teacher, still could hold a good conversation, still had good legs. But she suddenly wasn’t so safe and remote. And suddenly Hilda didn’t want to relegate the idea of her to a pocket of her cardigan for later use on sleepless nights or restless days.

“Would you like to get a drink sometime?” Hilda had found herself saying.

Mary Wardwell’s newly weird eyes had looked her up and down and up.

“I would.”

A previous Mary Wardwell wouldn’t have responded in this way.

A Hilda engaging with a previous Mary Wardwell would not have incited an interaction such as this.

“I do hope you don’t mean an Italian ice at Doctor Cerberus’s book shop,” Miss Wardwell had said with half a leer, gaze drifting to Hilda’s décolletage.

“Um no,” Hilda had said, fingertips playing with the bottom edge of her cardigan. “I meant a proper drink.”

Mary had stood, had said,

“How fortuitous that you’re my last conference of the day.”

Mary had driven them. And in her car they had quickly dispensed with any talk of teenagers and eleventh grade literature. By the time they’d reached the bar—all wood paneling and neon and adults—they had been discussing whether a-line or tulip skirts were more flattering on different female bodies.

By the time they were on their respective second drinks, they were discussing what attractiveness on different female bodies even meant in a patriarchal society.

Hilda had felt herself being drawn in, felt herself becoming increasingly drunk red wine spritzer after red wine spritzer. But Mary Wardwell had seemed so lucid and in control. This Mary Wardwell in a tight dress flirting with her and riling her up about feminist issues and being unaffected by alcohol in any way seemed so different than the Mary Wardwell she’d met at many other parent-teacher events. She had let herself be seduced anyway. She had seduced anyway.

Four red wine spritzers in, Hilda had said,

“Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is, Wardwell?”

“Excuse me?” Mary had said, very obviously feigning innocence while her eyes roamed Hilda’s body.

“I think we both know why you scheduled me last, love,” Hilda had said.

“Ah,” Mary had said. “So you are as perceptive as I’d hoped.” Drunk Hilda had said:

“Perceptive, yes. And responsive besides.” Even as Real Hilda had wondered about this sexy Wardwell. She was so different from the Wardwell she’d first met, the one with the trifold in granny penmanship. She was one to talk, of course.

“Oh?” Mary had said, unseeingly slapping bills onto the counter and standing. “Prove it.”

Drunk Hilda could not not prove it. She followed Mary wherever she would go.

And that had turned out to be just to Mary’s cottage in the woods.

Mary had pulled her down onto the bear-skin rug in front of the roaring fire that had somehow already been lit.

Hilda had giggled into the fur until she had turned and seen Mary’s elated and expectant face. They had both sobered slightly, looking at each other inches apart, lying side by side.

“Well?” Mary had said.

“Well,” Hilda had said. “Are you going to kiss me or not?”

Mary Wardwell had been, in that moment, all the Mary Wardwells she’d ever been and not been—all the shy school teachers with shitty infographics, all the hot school teachers with short skirts. A flash had flashed in Mary Wardwell’s eyes that had been both exactly and not exactly what Hilda had expected. 

But Mary had kissed her regardless. Very thoroughly.

xxx

Hilda’s lying next to Mary. Their heartbeats are slowing and synchronizing. She wants to ask about the change. She, herself, never changes. Zelda never changes. They never change together. And maybe that’s the answer. Maybe a single woman blessedly alone can and will and must change continually.

But she still has a little guilt about it. Maybe this current Mary is not the real Mary but some manufactured entity created to attract. Created for the intimacy that real actual Mary has needed this whole time. Maybe Hilda should’ve fucked Mary Wardwell before her mysterious transformation—she had certainly been willing to. But maybe that previous Mary wouldn’t have let her. 

She supposes and supposes.

Mary, still half panting beside her, notices.

“You’re thinking too much,” Mary says. She drapes a leg across Hilda’s body, grinds her hips languidly.

“You caught me,” Hilda says, arching into Mary instinctively.

“I did, didn’t I?” Mary says as she fists Hilda’s hair. “I’ve always wanted to catch you. And now I have.” Her tongue is in Hilda’s mouth, exploring and claiming. Hilda gasps, pulls back, says,

“What do you mean you’ve always wanted to catch me?”

Mary’s eyes glisten in the low light of her bedroom. She laughs, says,

“I don’t owe you an explanation. And anyway you don’t need one.”

Hilda opens her mouth to protest, to ask more questions, but Mary has inched herself down and down, and now her mouth is at Hilda’s clit, a full kiss and then lapping delicately with just the tip of her tongue, slow and intense and then fast and intense. Hilda bucks against her, and Mary’s hands steady her hips—not restraining but guiding into a sustainable rhythm. Mary’s tongue and Hilda’s thrusts and then—

“Oh!”

Mary slides her tongue against Hilda a few more times; Hilda’s bucking and moaning and sighing, and then Mary raises up, says,

“Delicious. Just as I had surmised.” Mary smirks, licks her wet lips. “And so sweet, too. Like brown sugar. Or raspberry iced tea.”

Mary is different now. Mary owns her sexuality, Mary wants her and takes her.

Hilda doesn’t know what to think about it all. But she likes it. Even if she doesn’t get it, she likes it.


	2. Chapter 2

Hilda’s not the kind of person to not address an issue.

Well, she certainly is the kind of person to not not address plenty of issues. She has quite an elaborate little dance with a lot of metaphorical veils for a lot of different types of issues.

But for as much dancing she does, at least she doesn’t bottle things up and act as though everything’s fine and in order and perfectly normal, put on red lipstick like a galvanized shield and pretend, like some people she knows, who are her sister, of course.

A lot’s been going on. And the dust is finally settled. Just a tad. Just enough. Just enough to begin sorting everyone’s emotional well-being. 

She starts with her own. She’s murdered some folks, but they all deserved it, and it’s nothing she hasn’t done before. Their new deity doesn’t seem to mind either way.

Of course, she’d slept with their new deity a handful of times when said new deity was pretending to just be a person and then a handful of other times when said new deity was pretending to just be a witch.

So perhaps she oughtn’t hang her morality on that particular coat rack. And anyway, there’s not a lot of evidence to suggest that said new deity wants to be a deity so much as just be. Take what’s hers and rule over it the way she sees fit. Exist as herself. And isn’t that what everyone wants?

Additionally, when they’d slept together, Lilith or Mary or Lilith as Mary or Lilith imagining what a mortal woman or witch might act like, had never been particularly demanding. Had never seemed to want to be worshipped. Had never asked for devotion in any way. She’d always just seemed to want to both give and receive attention and intimacy. And isn’t that what everyone wants?

Hilda can’t reconcile what she knows about Lilith—personally, not mythically or instinctively or generationally—with this new church her sister has been building from basically nothing.

She’s supportive because she’s supportive as a person. She’s supportive because Zelda needs this, needs something to focus on, needs something to believe in.

This is a dance with a lot of veils. And she’s trying to figure out when exactly to shed this veil, drop this bombshell, that perhaps they don’t need to worship anyone and that in fact maybe their magic is partly innate and partly from the earth and partly influenced by the framework of a coven of like-minded and true-hearted individuals working together to better each other. She knows Zelda will think her ideas heretical, and perhaps they are. But what would Lilith say, the entity they’re allegedly praying to these days? Hilda’s pretty sure she knows her answer, but she’s fucked off to hell, and Zelda’s safe space is liturgy and self-loathing, so it’s difficult to address the issue. It’s not that she won’t. It’s just the when and how of doing so. It’s not that she doesn’t want to. It’s just she isn’t ready to shoulder that. They’ve all been through so much, and she knows herself well enough to know she can’t handle the conversation yet. And further, she knows Zelda well enough to know that Zelda will never really be ready for it, so Hilda must be as ready as possible, as stable as possible, as invested and well-researched as possible when she does inevitably approach her about yet another structural and theological shift.

As well as they know each other. And they do. They really do. There are a couple things Zelda doesn’t know about Hilda (Hilda doesn’t kid herself; she’s sure Zelda has her own secrets). One of them is that Hilda and Lilith had been banging. Another is that sometimes Hilda turns to the false God’s scriptures for comfort. She especially likes the absolutely bonkers adventures some of the Old Testament prophets got up to. She loves Saul the most. He was chosen to be king by his god and then was just humiliated over and over again, plagued by both literal demons and his own ideas of revenge. He outlawed witches and then actively sought them out when the chips were down. A beautiful descent into madness and then begging to be killed but ultimately having to do it himself. 

Hilda doesn’t know what either of these things says about her as a person.

She deals with her own emotional well-being first but contemporaneously with silently and empathetically juggling Zelda’s various complexes and honestly talking through Sabrina’s feelings about her unsettling position as potential demigod over hot cocoa cuddled up on the sofa and writing and then rewriting letters so they’ll be as encouraging as need be to absentee warrior Ambrose.

The dust has settled just enough that she’s in a tentative new routine, a precarious thing.

She’s back to working at the bookshop, in fact.

It had been a healing event, a normalizing event, when she and Zelda had plotted exactly how she might use the bracelet to her best advantage. They’d giggled and conferenced and planned. And after she’d successfully bedded the incubus, there had been a light-hearted debriefing in which they had snuggled and teased each other, eating popcorn cross-legged on the living room rug. Very regular. A sigh of relief.

It’s very near closing at the bookshop.

And in walks yet another issue to dance around.

It’s Mary Wardwell, and she’s drab and delicate.

And delicious, Hilda thinks. But then she reprimands herself.

By all accounts, Mary Wardwell ought to be dead. Lilith uses mortals up, feasts on their flesh. But Lilith had done some favor for Sabrina—details are hazy around hot cocoa—involving sparing her favorite teacher. Hilda can’t help but think this is a favor for her, too, all things considered. 

Hilda can’t help but think this is not a very magnanimous favor as the real Mary Wardwell is so very obviously very confused and afraid. Hilda can’t help but think that Lilith is not someone anyone should pray to but just a very powerful ridiculous person who wants the best but often does the worst.

Mary sits primly in a booth. Hilda approaches.

“Hello, Miss Wardwell. May I take your order?” Mary looks at her, blinks, blushes.

“Um yes thank you, Miss Spellman. A strawberry Italian ice, please.” Hilda scribbles on her pad, and Mary is saying, “Are you still serving food?”

“Afraid not, love.”

Mary frowns, says,

“I’ve been so famished lately.” Mary’s eyes are wide and honest. She looks gaunt and pale and hungry and yearning. She’s looking at Hilda and searching her, too.

Hilda’s stomach drops. Any time she’s seen a similar look on this face, she’s ended up moaning in her bed. But she knows that’s not exactly what this is. This is another broken person. This is another person affected by events outside of her control. Hilda doesn’t know what the real Mary remembers about the time her body had been inhabited by Lilith. But she sees her. She sees the real Mary seeing her, looking at her, desiring her, needing comfort.

And that’s a pickle. A pickle and a half. Another veil to be shed.

“How do you feel about scrambled eggs?” Hilda stage whispers.

Mary’s hands are flat on the table. Her eyes are firmly fixed on Hilda’s eyes. Mary says,

“I prefer sunny side up.”

Hilda says,

“I’m going to make your Italian ice to go. You should come over and see how good I am at eggs.”

Mary swallows. Her neck is so luxurious, and she doesn’t even seem to know it.

“Come over?” Mary says.

“Yes. Come over,” Hilda says. “It’s the big gothic house right on the edge of town. Can’t miss it.”

Mary blinks and blushes again. 

She takes her strawberry Italian ice in a styrofoam cup and disappears through the doorway. Hilda watches her recede. Hilda contemplates. Hilda performs the rest of her duties.

Mary Wardwell has a lot going on. She’s been dead. She’s been not dead. She’s been possessed. She’s been and not been. And Hilda has seen her naked. Hilda has seen a lot of her. Mary has not controlled her own body. The old real current Mary is inhabiting a body that had been inhabited by someone else and maybe doesn’t know it. She feels it but doesn’t know it. She knows it and doesn’t feel it. Mary Wardwell is a lot of things at once.

“I prefer sunny side up, but I also like omelettes,” Mary says as she takes a bar seat at the kitchen island of the Spellman residence. Hilda’s already got the eggs in the frying pan. She turns.

“It’s okay to want what you want,” Hilda says.

Mary’s eyes meet hers. Mary Wardwell is all Mary Wardwell. Hilda sees that granny penmanship on a trifold. Hilda knows Mary is now Mary. But Mary herself doesn’t know, is unsure.

Mary has a lot of women inside her and doesn’t even know it.

What would Lilith say about it all?

Ha! Hilda doesn’t trust that not-woman as far as she can throw her, especially now that she’s seen Mary’s sad little face again.

Hilda plates the eggs, perfectly sunny side up, and wheat toast and orange marmalade and hash browns and half a grapefruit. Hilda sits across from her, with the other half of the grapefruit.

“Tell me if you want sugar for that. I prefer mine without,” Hilda says, edging her grapefruit spoon gently against the rind.

Mary looks at her plate and then back up at Hilda.

“No, thank you. But also. Thank you. For having me.”

Hilda looks at her.

“I just want you to know, Miss Wardwell. If you find yourself—hmm. Not quite sure how to phrase it. You can talk to me. I’ll believe you, whatever it is.”

Mary swallows a bite, nods, cocks her head.

“I—ok. I. Might take you up on that.”

“I’d be honored if you did,” Hilda says.


	3. Chapter 3

“What was that woman doing here?” Zelda hisses as she flops her unread newspaper onto the dining table.

The front door has just closed on Sabrina, who had been on her way to the Academy.

Mary Wardwell had left hours ago through the same door but rather more silently.

“What woman?” Hilda says, scrubbing a counter that’s already clean.

“You know what woman,” Zelda says.

Hilda does know what woman. And she also suspects she knows what Zelda’s implying. However, she also knows the woman who’s come over and why. Mary has come over several times now—for eggs, for backgammon, for whiskey, for poetry, for hugs, for confessions, for solace.

Most recently, Mary had come over to grade papers as Hilda knitted and they mutually half listened to the documentary about electric cars Hilda had arbitrarily put on the tv for white noise until they both had accidentally fallen asleep. 

Hilda figures Zelda had somehow seen Mary groggily saying her goodbyes and slipping out the front door.

“I do know what woman. And what of it?” Hilda says. She tosses her cleaning rag into the sink.

“What of it?! What of it, indeed!” Zelda says, angrily fumbling a match to shakily light a cigarette.

Hilda looks at Zelda’s incensed face. Zelda’s seeing a lot of things Hilda isn’t. Zelda’s seeing a god where Hilda’s seeing a person. Zelda’s seeing betrayals and lies. Zelda’s seeing unanswered prayers. Zelda’s seeing a reminder of a lot of things she’d prefer to forget.

“What would you have me do, Zelds? She needs a friend.”

“Don’t we all.” Zelda stands to leave. Hilda touches her forearm.

“Yes. Don’t we all,” Hilda says. Zelda huffs, wrenches her arm away, says,

“Don’t. I don’t want to talk.” Hilda opens her mouth to gently remind her that she’s not asking for that but she’s up for it, but Zelda sees all that on her face already and cuts her off: “If you must pry into that woman’s life and learn all her secrets, could you at least go to her place instead?” Zelda turns and begins walking toward the basement door. Hilda pauses, watching and thinking and then,

“What do you mean ‘pry’?” Zelda’s already straight shoulders tense. She doesn’t turn around, merely says,

“You want to know how much she remembers or doesn’t remember. For your own reasons.” Zelda opens the basement door. Hilda says,

“Well yes. But I also want to help her process any trauma associated with that.”

“I’ll bet you do.” Zelda says rather suggestively as she disappears into the basement.

Perhaps Hilda hadn’t suspected the correct implication. Perhaps Zelda had known about her and Lilith’s dalliances. Either way, she’s offended. Mary does need a friend. And she does want to help, selflessly help.

But Zelda deserves her feelings, too. Maybe she needs this. Maybe she needs something to feel righteous and morally superior about so she can start sorting things into the appropriate boxes in her brain. Zelda is most herself, most whole, most healthy, when she’s right. And she’s been so wrong about so many things lately that Hilda knows she needs a win.

The false God and Satan are all about absolutes and objective truths. Lilith is about perspectives and shades of meaning and individual power. While Zelda claims allegiance now to Lilith, she’s been raised in the old traditions, and besides, her innate personality is just. Like that. She prefers a black and white problem and solution, a right and a wrong. Hilda’s always been too empathetic for that, and she can give this to her. She can spin her own story for her sister’s benefit. Maybe that’s why Lilith had scheduled her last on Mary Wardwell’s conference roster those months ago. Maybe she had recognized and liked that about Hilda. Hilda likes to think so. She also likes to think Lilith just likes her in general. Although she currently has mixed feelings about her.

(How dare Lilith just blow out of town, leaving them all with nothing? How dare she grant Mary a second life with no explanation of her missing months? How dare she let Zelda start a church devoted to her with no direction?)

Hilda realizes she has a little more rage inside her than she’d previously been cognizant of. Hilda realizes she’s personally hurt as well as hurt on behalf of others about Lilith’s sudden departure.

But she also can’t blame her. Lilith’s getting everything she’s wanted and deserved, and now there must be some reorganizing per her vision. She’s probably very busy. And demons—even the Mother of Demons—are not omniscient, nor are they omnipotent. They see a lot and have a lot of power, but they don’t see everything and don’t have power over everything. Lilith’s probably trying to take one thing at a time, just as Hilda is. But Lilith’s priority must be her own kingdom, just as Hilda’s priority is her own close contacts.

Hilda descends the basement stairs.

Zelda’s standing above a corpse. She has her mask and gloves on. Her hands are hanging at her sides, an electric saw in her right hand. But she’s just standing there, staring at the wall.

“You’re right,” Hilda says. “I need to know about Mary’s experiences for myself.” It’s not exactly true, but it’s not exactly not true. It’s true enough for Hilda to say it and Zelda to believe.

Zelda plops the saw onto the table against the corpse’s hip, looks at Hilda, says,

“How long have you two been fucking?”

Hilda looks at Zelda’s rigid body. Zelda could use a win.

“She needs a friend,” Hilda says.

“Just gals being pals,” Zelda says derisively.

“I can take care of this body if you’ve got something else to do,” Hilda says.

Zelda looks at the body on the slab and then at Hilda. She says,

“I don’t have something else to do just now. But you do.”

Hilda knows Zelda always has so much to do. Hilda knows Zelda’s being petty. Hilda knows she’s the object of Zelda’s hatred, and she doesn’t begrudge her. She’s died for less. But now that Zelda has been through so much, she suspects she won’t have to die ever again until it’s her time to truly die.

xxx

Mary stokes the fire. She’s on her knees and utilizing an iron poker. The silhouette is similar enough that Hilda shivers about it. But she immediately remembers she’s here as a friend, a confidant, a comforter rather than as a consort.

Mary rises, looks at Hilda in the dim light, takes a seat. She reaches for a stack of papers to grade and says, blinking at the assignments,

“I sometimes don’t feel this is my home. I’m often more comfortable in your den.” Her head is still down, and Hilda stares at the top of her bowed head.

“I know, love. But it’s better this way.” Mary looks up at that, and their eyes lock.

“Better how?” Mary says.

“It’s private here,” Hilda says.

Neither nod. Neither even acknowledge this has been said. Mary grades papers, and Hilda reads her book. Until Mary says,

“You told me once I could tell you anything, no matter how bizarre.”

“Yes,” Hilda says. “And I stand by that.”

Mary shuffles the papers in her lap, clears her throat.

Hilda dog ears the page in her book and closes it, stares at Mary. Mary, at this scrutiny, aligns the sheets and places them neatly on her coffee table.

Mary folds her hands primly in her lap. Hilda mirrors her. Mary says,

“I had a disturbing dream the other night.”

“Oh?” Hilda says. “Tell me about it.” Mary again clears her throat, says,

“It was so realistic. But also so surreal. I was teaching a class. And then there was a call for me over the intercom. I went to the principal’s office, but you were behind the desk instead of the principal.” Mary pauses.

“And what happened next?” Hilda says.

Mary is sheepish, bows her head, looks toward the fireplace that’s burning itself out. Finally Mary whispers,

“I think you know.”

“I might. But I’d rather you told me,” Hilda whispers. “I’d rather you wanted it.”

They look at each other.

Hilda doesn’t see Lilith. For the first time, she sees Mary and only Mary, and what she sees unnerves her. She’s wanted to help Mary, but she hasn’t actually seen Mary until now, in this fraught moment.

They look at each other.

Mary squeezes her eyes shut, eeks out,

“I woke up from the dream so wet.” Mary opens her eyes, searches Hilda’s face. “I. I want you.”

“I want you, too,” Hilda says.

Mary smiles a tentative smile.

“Are you sure?” Mary says.

Hilda is not sure about many things. She doesn’t know where she stands in the universe, what her role is in the grand scheme of things. But she absolutely does know this.

“Yes, love. I want you to put your tongue in my mouth,” Hilda says.

Mary does.

Hilda remembers what it’s like to have Lilith fuck her. But Mary is better in her way. More earnest, more genuine. Mary fucks her to establish a connection. Lilith had fucked to fuck.

(How dare Lilith use a body that wasn’t hers!)

“May I—?” Mary pants.

Hilda grunts her response. 

Hilda grasps Mary’s hair. 

Mary’s lips travel. And travel.

Hilda can’t sort the sensations. 

Hilda knows Mary needs to be in control of her own life. Hilda isn’t sure this counts, but her body likes it regardless.

Mary’s tongue is inside her.

They’re both moaning.

Mary sighs against Hilda’s clit, and Hilda bucks her hips. Mary rears up, looks into Hilda’s eyes, says,

“Tell me what you want.”

“I want you to be satisfied,” Hilda says. Mary laughs, says,

“What a convenient lie.”


	4. Chapter 4

Hilda’s again lying nude and sweaty and panting next to a nude and sweaty and panting Mary Wardwell.

They’re pressed together on the divan, skin on skin on the narrow cushions. Mary’s on the outside. She drapes a leg over Hilda’s legs and readjusts herself so she’s no longer halfway to falling off. Her breath is now in Hilda’s ear.

Hilda has a lot of thoughts running on both parallel and perpendicular tracks. In the foreground there is the one that wonders what kind of influence Lilith has had on Mary, what kind of muscle memory is there, what kind of shadow image is there influencing her current actions. Or alternately, what effect Mary’s body had had on Lilith’s consciousness.

The two women in the one body fuck in very much the same way, in a technical sense. The touches are the same. The sensations those touches elicit are the same. The intention or impetus or inspiration may be different, but the execution is the same. How much does Mary remember consciously, subconsciously, unconsciously? She tries to address it delicately:

“Have you had other dreams?”

Mary sighs and digs her fingers into Hilda’s hip, says,

“Yes. All as surreal and sexy, if you must know.”

“Do you want to talk about them?” Hilda says.

“No,” Mary says. “But I would like to kiss you about them.”

“Oh,” Hilda says. She’s still wondering about the juxtaposition of Lilith and Mary, but she says outside of herself, “I’m certainly amenable.”

Mary is more than amenable.

xxx

Hilda’s working on a needlepoint in bed.

Zelda enters the room.

Zelda’s draped in all her finery, but she’s visibly tired. Bags under her eyes peeking through her perfect makeup. Shoulders straining to be straight rather than naturally holding themselves at haughty angles.

She doesn’t even kick off her pumps before she melts face-up onto her duvet.

Hilda pauses the workings of her needle, waits for Zelda to say,

“I do want to talk.”

Hilda clenches her fingers around the wooden brace of her needlepoint. She says,

“And I always want to listen.”

Zelda sighs. If her eyes weren’t already closed they’d be rolling.

There is a long pause before Zelda says,

“Lilith hasn’t answered any of my prayers. Maybe she’d be more inclined to answer yours. Considering.”

Hilda looks over at her. Zelda is flopped onto her bed, but she’s not relaxed. Zelda’s rigid and tense even in this repose. Hilda gets it. Hilda doesn’t like it, but she gets it. Zelda is the high priestess of a new church and can’t catch a break.

“I doubt it,” Hilda says.

Zelda opens her eyes, turns her head. Her gaze is so piercing and accusing.

“You do, do you?” Zelda says.

A silent beat.

And then Zelda is up and pacing and saying,

“There’s no good damn reason she should have chosen you yet she did and now there’s no good damn reason you should withhold her reasoning yet you do. I’ve half a mind that she’s arbitrary. I’ve half a mind that she prefers blondes!”

“Lilith might prefer blondes. But she doesn’t care what those blondes prefer,” Hilda says. “And anyway. I believe in you, dear sister. We can accomplish so much without all this theological horseshit. We’re more than that. You’re more than that.”

Zelda bristles and then preens.

“Do you really think I’m more than that?” Zelda says.

“I absolutely do,” Hilda says.

xxx

Hilda has made a pot roast. It’s 60 percent free-range-grass-fed-humanely-raised beef, 40 percent organically grown vegetables. If Hilda must eat meat, this is the way she prefers it. And as much of a bitch as Zelda is, she prefers her meals this way, as well. Ethical and sustainable.

Hilda has made a pot roast everyone can enjoy for the evening Mary Wardwell will join them for dinner.

There is a wildflower bouquet as centerpiece. The good china is out. Malbec graces the crystal glasses.

The only thing missing is Ambrose. He’s on a mission no one talks about but everyone thinks about. Some more than others. Hilda has put a proverbial pin in that more times than she can count. But still Zelda is not ready for that conversation.

Hilda has made a pot roast, and they all enjoy it.

Zelda pokes her fork at a new red potato, says,

“So. Miss Wardwell. Sabrina’s an A-plus student. There’s really no reason for you to be here. My lovely and charming sister has no reason to seduce you.” Zelda pokes at her plate some more, continues, “Unless you want to be seduced.”

“Excuse me?” Mary says.

They all look at one another.

“I’ve got homework,” Sabrina says. She excuses herself and hastily exits.

“It’s not your place—” Hilda starts.

“Well it looks like—” Zelda starts.

“Oh! I never—” Mary starts.

They all look at each other in the candle light.

“She doesn’t know anything real, does she?” Zelda says.

They all look at each other again in the candle light.

“Probably not,” Hilda says.

“I’m the she,” Mary says. “And I don’t know anything. But I can tell you what I’d prefer to know.”

Hilda and Zelda look at her. Mary says,

“I’d prefer to know what in the world is going on.”

“How unfortunate for you,” Zelda says as Hilda says,

“Sorry, love.”


	5. Chapter 5

Hilda arrives at Mary’s at 6 sharp with a bouquet of wildflowers in one hand and a Pyrex of apple crisp in the other. Truth be told, she prefers blackberry cobbler and would have made that if it weren’t for how unsexy those seeds lodged in the teeth tend to be, how the discomfort of them makes kissing less pleasant. Perhaps, she thinks, this shouldn’t have been among her top priorities when planning for the evening. They’d had sex on three occasions since Mary had been only Mary, had indulged in some heavy petting a few other times, and had barely spoken since the family dinner. Hilda thinks she should probably be more worried about being broken up with than the effects of dessert on kissing enjoyment. But she knows Mary’s kind and thoughtful, and she suspects they have a connection, and she hopes this dinner will illuminate some things.

Mary had had a vase already prepared for the flowers and a spot on the table for the Pyrex.

Hilda sighs contentedly at those two details and kisses Mary’s cheek:

“Thank you for inviting me.”

Mary allows the kiss but does not give one in return, simply says,

“Thank you for accepting the invitation.” Before she turns rather curtly back to the kitchen. 

Hilda stands there in the dining room, weighing her options. She could sit, or she could go help in the kitchen. She hadn’t expected a particularly warm welcome considering how their last evening together had ended, but there’s something in Mary’s abrupt manner that unsettles her. It hits her that it’s kind of a Zelda way to handle an uncomfortable situation—forced pleasantry and then avoidance. At least she has the tools to handle that sort of response. She calls out,

“Anything I can do?”

“Oh!” Mary’s voice says from the kitchen. “No, I’m. Very nearly done. Um. You can open the wine if you like.”

Mary has a cute little ‘50s cabinet bar in the corner, and there are two bottles of Riesling and a corkscrew set off at the front. Hilda opens one and pours two glasses, sets them at their respective place settings at the table.

By the time Hilda’s completed this task, Mary’s emerged with two plates of stir fry, which she distributes to the place settings. She doesn’t sit.

“It’s very hot yet. Would you like to dance? As it cools?”

Hilda blinks. 

“Yes,” she says.

Next to the bar is a record player, and Mary clicks it on. It had also been prepared well in advance—it immediately plays a quiet “Tennessee Waltz,” and Mary very gently takes Hilda in her arms and leads her in a tight but languid waltz in the cramped room.

“This is nice,” Hilda says halfway through the song.

“Yes,” Mary says. “I’m glad you like it.” But then she stops dancing and holds Hilda in a loose embrace, says, “I found something weird, and I want you to look at it.”

The song ends, and the record hisses as its rotations slow to a halt. Their eyes lock. 

“Ok?” Hilda says.

Mary interlaces their fingers of the hands that are barely cupping each other from the waltz and drags Hilda to the bathroom.

They’re still holding hands as they stand next to the bathtub, and Mary points with her other hand toward a corner under the sink.

“I was cleaning. That’s what I do when I’m upset. And I found it right there.” She points more forcefully, and Hilda follows the imaginary line to a perfectly clean and white tile. Mary squeezes her hand and then discontinues pointing so she can use that hand to open the medicine cabinet. She produces a small glass jar with an eyeball floating in it. “I stole the formalin from the biology teacher. I wasn’t ready to talk to you about it yet. But I am now.” She shakes the jar a little closer to Hilda’s face. Hilda stares at the disembodied eye, and Mary continues, “I’ve been having strange dreams. I never had strange dreams before; they were always turning up naked to teach a class, missing my train, the regular sort of thing. But now they’re so detailed and delirious and delicious. They’re different, but I can understand that. And if I can’t understand that, I can stand that. But this. But this! I have no memory of the past few months, and I find a human eyeball in my bathroom! What does this mean?! Who am I?! What have I done?!” She sets the jar down on the sink so she can grasp Hilda’s other hand and look pleadingly into her eyes: “I trust you. I don’t know why, but I trust you, and I trust you to tell me the truth, however ugly. Have I had a psychotic break because my rational mind can’t cope with the reality that I’m a serial killer?!”

Hilda pulls her into a tight hug. Mary needs a hug, and Hilda needs the time the hug affords to formulate some answer. She’s reeling, though probably not quite as much as Mary is, and definitely not as much as Mary will be when she knows the truth. She’d wanted to help Mary process her trauma, but this is a little above her pay grade. She finally whispers into her ear,

“It’s statistically improbable you’re a serial killer.”

It’s not very comforting and not the right thing to say. Mary rears back, says,

“You don’t want to float any other theories?”

Hilda looks into Mary’s searching, fearful, angry eyes. She decides she’s morally obligated. She says,

“I think you’re going to want to have a glass of wine and also be sitting down before I tell you what I’m about to tell you.”


	6. Chapter 6

“So, let me get this straight: what you’re telling me is that for the past six months my essentially dead body has been inhabited by an immortal entity who was doing the bidding of Satan—the actual biblical Satan, fallen angel and accuser and father of lies—manipulating earthly events to trigger the apocalypse until she had some feminist crisis of conscience and rebelled against her lover-cum-abuser-cum-lord, effectively subdued him, left to rule her rightful kingdom in Hell, and resurrected me as a favor to your niece? And somewhere along the way several men were murdered in the process, including my fiancé and at least one delivery boy?”

Mary is pacing in front of her fireplace, her fourth glass of Riesling sloshing in her tense grip.

Hilda is perched straight-backed in a plush velveteen arm chair. She’s learned from Zelda and is drinking scotch and suppressing her urge to explain. She nods and says,

“Correct.”

Mary huffs and downs the rest of her glass. Hilda bounds up and refills it and then retreats to her spot on the chair, waiting.

Mary looks at her, at her glass, at Hilda’s glass, at the wine bottle on the coffee table, at the decanter on the coffee table. And then she resumes pacing.

“I haven’t been myself for months. Half a year,” Mary says. “Did Lilith even bother acquiring and documenting the professional development points I need to retain my teaching license and provisional administrative license that would qualify me to be the acting principal?” She looks again at Hilda. “But licensure wasn’t her priority, was it?” She takes a long gulp of her wine and closes in on Hilda. She points accusingly, her index finger sharp against the topmost ridge of Hilda’s sternum. “And licensure wasn’t your priority, either, was it?”

“Not exactly in my wheelhouse,” Hilda chokes out. Mary laughs, and her index finger is even firmer, even pointier.

“Not in your wheelhouse!” Mary finishes her glass and places it haphazardly on the coffee table, resumes pacing and gesticulating. “What is in your wheelhouse, Hilda Spellman? Being—” She pauses and blushes and takes a steadying breath. She resumes with a bravado Hilda hadn’t expected: “Getting dicked down by what might as well be a demon and then very gently and tenderly seducing the woman that demon-adjacent thing had used as a host?”

Hilda flounders. She opens her mouth, shuts it, opens it, and Mary is talking again,

“You knew the whole time! You knew I wasn’t myself, and then you knew when I was myself again. And you got in my pants regardless!”

There is an uncomfortable silence. They can hear each other breathing, the crackle of the fire, the harsh wind at the windows.

“That’s not exactly accurate,” Hilda says. Mary pierces her with her gaze, wills her to go on. “I didn’t know the whole time. I knew only recently, and. Well. When I did. I thought you were exercising your agency. I was trying to help,”

Mary laughs derisively:

“Trying to help yourself.”

Hilda stands, straightens her skirt. She says,

“Think whatever you want to think, Miss Wardwell. I’ve told you the truth. I can do very little besides. Yes, when Lilith controlled your body we enjoyed each other. And yes, when you regained control of your body we enjoyed each other. I thought all these instances of physical enjoyment had been consensual and mutual. But if they haven’t, I apologize. I don’t want to take advantage in any way. Your body has not always been yours. But when it was yours to command, I suppose I erroneously thought you’d desired me. Excuse me for my presumption.”

Hilda’s standing in the middle of the living room, smoothing her hands over her cardigan. Mary is looking at her, analyzing her, analyzing herself.

“There’s a lot to unpack,” Mary says. “And I need your help going through all the luggage.” 

Hilda pauses in her retreat, looks at Mary. They look at each other. Mary says,

“I trust you. There’s no good reason for me to do so, but I do. Please. Sit.”

Hilda retakes her seat in the armchair. She sees it as a show of solidarity. A capitulation. A unifying thing.

But as soon as she’s sitting, Mary says,

“When did you know?”

They blink at each other. Mary elaborates,

“When did you know you were fucking someone who wasn’t me? Or. When did you know you weren’t fucking who you had thought you were?”

“It’s not that simple,” Hilda says. 

Mary laughs.

“It isn’t, is it?” Mary says. 

Mary deposits herself into Hilda’s lap, cups Hilda’s face with both of her soft hands.

“It’s complicated,” Mary says in a whisper. 

“Yes,” Hilda whispers back.

They look at each other.

Hilda knows she’s been selfish. Hilda knows a lot of things. But she also doesn’t know a lot more. She knows that Mary knows a lot less. And yet here Mary is on top of her, staring at her, trusting and doubting her.

Hilda wants to help, wants to be an ear to listen and a canvas to experiment on. But she knows she’s not a completely neutral ear or a completely blank canvas. Perhaps Mary gets this and maybe even likes this in a way Hilda can’t access. She doesn’t want to pry into her brain, and even if she did, there’s a barrier there. Perhaps another gift from Lilith.

Mary’s hands are soft against Hilda’s face, but they’re firm, too. She turns Hilda’s head this way and that, analyzing her from different angles.

“It is complicated, isn’t it?” Mary says. Hilda swallows. Mary continues, “You’re just a person. A person tangled up in a lot of nonsense. Just as I am.” Mary’s gaze is piercing now, and her fingers are digging into Hilda’s scalp and jaw. “I shouldn’t want you so badly after all this has been revealed. But somehow I do.” Her hands shift elegantly as her hips buck. Fingers now entwined in blonde curls, hips connecting with Hilda’s hips, mouth a breath away from Hilda’s mouth.

Hilda’s own hands are clutching at Mary’s lower back, fingers digging in possessively.

This is one of myriad things Hilda’s been worrying about: Mary’s body’s remembering. Mary’s body’s inexplicable (to actual Mary) pull toward her. If somebody can practice piano etudes so often as to have one’s fingers instinctively remember the patterns, one can perfect anything through muscle memory. And Mary’s body is still and always Mary’s body. And the brain is partially muscle. And even if it weren’t, it’s just as or maybe even more so susceptible to patterns and routines. How many routines are hers alone and how many belong exclusively to Lilith, and does Hilda have the capacity to sort the difference?

“I’m very confused,” Mary pants into Hilda’s mouth. She grinds her hips into Hilda’s. “And I’m very angry.” One hand releases Hilda’s hair and nudges itself inside Hilda’s blouse. “But so are you.” She squeezes Hilda’s breast.

Hilda arches up into Mary’s touch and kisses her. Mary allows this. Mary tugs at her hair and draws her closer, bucks, squeezes harder. But then she pulls back, says,

“I just need to know. Is your loyalty to Lilith? Or is to me?”

Hilda takes a shaky breath. And then she says,

“Does Lilith write in cursive?”

Mary cocks her head inquisitively. Hilda elaborates,

“No. For the record, she doesn’t.” Hilda throws an arm around Mary’s neck and pulls her close. “It’s not all I like about you, but it’s one thing.”

Mary doesn’t understand what Hilda’s implying, but she likes it. She presses her body closer.

“I’m so sorry for everything you’ve been through,” Hilda says.

“Make me forget it all,” Mary says.

“You won’t hold it against me later?” Hilda says.

“Make me forget it or get out.”

Their eyes meet.

And then their mouths meet.


	7. Chapter 7

“You look like shit,” Zelda says. She’s smoking a cigarette and playing solitaire by one flickering lightbulb in the breakfast nook. The ashtray is overflowing. Her tumbler is empty and sweating into its coaster.

Hilda hangs her coat and flops into the breakfast nook across from Zelda, moves a red seven over to a black eight, says,

“I feel like shit.”

Zelda raises an eyebrow and places the black six on the top of her stock onto Hilda’s red seven.

“Even after you’ve very obviously gotten laid?” Zelda says.

They look at each other then. Hilda scans the tableau, says,

“This is a losing game, Zelds. You’re playing with 51 cards.”

Zelda moves the two of spades from the stock to on top of the ace of spades, says,

“All games are losing games.”

“Even so,” Hilda says. “I’ve got a full deck in my nightstand.”

“I don’t rummage through your nightstand,” Zelda says.

They look at each other.

“You rummage plenty,” Hilda says. Zelda hums, flips another three cards. Ace of clubs to its little spot in the sorority house. A black nine for a red ten. A useless king of diamonds. She flips three cards again and looks up at Hilda,

“I could use a steak right about now.” Hilda runs a hand through her sex-tousled hair. She sighs, says,

“Medium?”

“Medium-rare. I’ve got a taste for blood tonight.”

“Of course you do.”

Hilda stands, takes off her cardigan. Zelda stares at a hickey on her neck, but Hilda continues to the freezer regardless. She turns on the hot water, and the tap is so slow to capitulate.

The steak is thawing. Hilda sits back down across from Zelda. Zelda’s glass has been refilled in the interim. She is shuffling the deck. She lights another cigarette.

“Gin rummy?” Zelda says.

“Useless,” Hilda says. “But whatever.”

Zelda pauses mid bridge, and cards scatter across the table.

“You’ve got a better idea?”

“You haven’t even offered me a drink,” Hilda says.

Zelda slides her own drink across the table and then stands as haughtily as her current inebriation will allow to retrieve another tumbler from the china hutch. She sloshes two fingers into her new glass and sets the decanter between them, sits primly. She gathers up the cards and shuffles again.

They play a hand with the incomplete deck. Hilda wins. And then she checks on the steak. It’s thawed. She’s cutting chunks of butter into the skillet when she feels Zelda beside her.

“You told her, didn’t you?” Zelda says.

“What else could I do?” Hilda says.

Zelda takes a gulp from her tumbler, laughs:

“You know, I tried to fuck her. When she was Lilith.” Hilda throws the steak into the skillet and focuses her attention on the hissing there. “But she acted so offended. She said, ‘It’s inappropriate. It’s unconscionable.’” Zelda had slurred a reasonable approximation of Lilith-as-Mary’s voice. “She didn’t want me because she wanted you. And good for you. But you still look like shit. What’s the problem, my darling sister? She’s worn you out? There’s too much shit going on with her than even you can handle?”

Hilda continues staring at the steak in the pan.

“There’s too much shit everywhere,” Hilda says.

Zelda’s hand is on her shoulder, turning her to face her.

“Don’t make this about me,” Zelda says, dark and low.

“You inserted yourself,” Hilda says. Zelda’s fingers are biting against Hilda’s shoulder.

“Eat this steak yourself and choke on it. I’m going to bed.” 

And Zelda is gone.

Hilda cooks it to medium and puts it in a plastic bag in the fridge.

xxx

Hilda tries out a prayer to Lilith. She feels powerless and silly. 

“Unholy mother, bless me.”

She quickly abandons that.

“Lilith. Listen up, you two-bit cunt. I’m struggling here, and so are all the people I care about. If you need to get your rocks off in order to listen to anybody’s troubles, you know I’m available.”

She sleeps fitfully.

xxx

Mary is ravenous. She texts her constantly with a lot of eggplant and peach emojis.

Hilda doesn’t know what to do with this other than respond and reciprocate.

Maybe Mary had always just been waiting for an opportunity. She still writes in cursive, after all.

xxx

Zelda’s delivering an impassioned sermon, and Hilda is in the front pew. But Hilda sees, just at her periphery, an image. Maybe even a shadow image. It’s a mere shadow but enough to know.

She’s effectively the First Lady and so sits in her pew with her hands folded in her lap, but when service is over, she hastens to the prayer room, says into the dark void,

“Fucking really?!”

A growling, unnatural voice responds:

“Really.”

Hilda checks that the door is locked, then, 

“Show yourself, you absolute wanker!”

Lilith materializes in front of her in the form of Mary Wardwell in a tight sequined dress.

“You rang?” Lilith says.

“Of course you’d be this easy,” Hilda says.

“You like easy,” Lilith says.

Hilda scoffs as Lilith laughs. Lilith says,

“I don’t actually have a lot of time on my hands. So if you’d get on with it…” She cocks her head in such a Mary Wardwell way that Hilda shudders before she says,

“Do you have any interest at all in my sister’s church?”

Mary’s beautiful throat is so exposed as Lilith laughs.

“Why would I? There is no church, as far as I’m concerned,” Lilith says.

“Please. Indulge her,” Hilda says.

“You indulge her enough for both of us.”

The vision dematerializes, and Hilda is once again alone in the dark.

xxx

“You don’t look so great,” Mary says.

Hilda hangs her coat in Mary’s foyer.

“I don’t feel so great,” Hilda says.

“Hot tub?” Mary says.

xxx

Mary’s hot tub on her back deck is a balm. 

A jet ministers to Hilda’s wonky ribs.

They relax.

They relax until they don’t.

“I know you have your own reasons for not feeling great, but I can’t help but thinking mine should take precedence,” Mary says.

“Just take me out back and shoot me if that’s what you want,” Hilda says. And she means it.


	8. Chapter 8

“You’re not going to like this suggestion, but I feel, at present, it must be suggested.” Hilda winces as she says it but then regains her composure, straightens her back against the divan.

She and Zelda are putting together a puzzle, sitting next to each other on the floor. Zelda’s been in a good mood today—chatty, even—so Hilda figures this is the best time to get this idea out.

“What is the suggestion, pray tell?”

“Hm well. You should befriend Mary Wardwell.”

Zelda sucks in a breath, presses two fingers to her temple:

“At this rate, the whole town will know we’re witches by the end of the year. Maybe we should just go ahead and take out a full-page ad in the newspaper, announce it to everyone at once.” Hilda will take the deflection. It’s better than a rejection.

“Two problems with that. One, Mary already knows, so that’s not an issue. Two, maybe twitter would be more effective than the newspaper. You’re the only one who reads it, after all.”

Zelda actually laughs at that, so Hilda figures she’s still good. She’s got a little wiggle room, can dip out of the conversation if it gets dicey with her jugular still intact.

“It’s just. You’ve both been through some similar trauma—”

“No, thank you. I will not be crying on her shoulder, and she will not be crying on mine.” Zelda pauses. “From what I’ve gathered, she’s self-medicating just fine in a very similar fashion as I often have.” Hilda remembers. Many nights she’d wake to Zelda sashaying in smelling of sex and liquor with smeared lipstick and tousled hair, nylons in her handbag if salvageable at all. Hilda blushes. Zelda’s comparing her relationship with Mary to countless, meaningless one-night stands to fuck the grief away. She swallows back her anger about it—and perhaps her own suspicion about it—to say,

“Well that’s just it, then, isn’t it? At least Mary’s trying something.” Zelda’s nostrils flair.

“And I’m doing nothing? I’ve got a church to run, and my deity doesn’t give a shit, so I’m having to do everything myself. Isn’t that enough of a distraction?”

“A distraction isn’t exactly—”

“And you’re self-medicating by meddling in everyone else’s business! Get a clue, Hildie!”

They sit silently for a moment. 

“You think this green piece is a tree or part of the car?” Zelda says.

“Ehhh… put it in the car pile,” Hilda says.

xxx

It’s a week and a half or so later.

Mary comes into Doc Cee’s and halts halfway to a table when she spots Hilda and her eyes go wide. Hilda looks around, wondering what the deal is. Mary comes in quite a bit. They flirt over milkshakes or sometimes—if they’re feeling naughty—make out in the ladies’ room for a bit.

The bell rings on the door, and in walks Zelda, sunglasses and furs like she’s just stepped out of Joan Crawford’s Mildred Pierce closet. And in fact, Hilda thinks, that particular fur coat may have indeed belonged to Joan Crawford at one point.

She sighs as Zelda trails a hand over Mary’s shoulder blades lightly and then passes her to take a seat at a booth. Mary looks at Hilda, looks at Zelda, visibly swallows. She then sits across from Zelda in the booth.

So this is how it’s going to be. Zelda will laugh in her face about talking things out and then blatantly steal her girlfriend in her place of business, no less. Sure, almost the exact thing has happened a handful of other times. Zelda likes to assert her dominance, piss on the fence, as it were. But this seems like a particularly low blow. They’ve all got so much going on. Surely there’s not time for this kind of pettiness. Hilda feels heat rising in her chest, her heart pounding. She’s getting mad and already half-plotting what her revenge will entail. Hell, if Lilith’s that ambivalent about the church, maybe she could convince her it might be fun to loan her some demons or something. That would certainly stick in Zelda’s craw—petty revenge with help from the witch you stupidly pray to!

She’s watching them conference sotto voce and she’s just seething. And then Zelda waves her over. She does have the right to refuse anyone service, but she clenches her jaw and walks over anyway.

“May I help you?” Hilda says in her best customer service voice.

Zelda laughs.

“Cut the shit, Hildegard. I’m doing this in public so you can’t say later I was lying about it.”

Hilda blinks. That’s a bold way to say “I’m going to fuck your girlfriend” even for Zelda.

Mary again looks at them in turn, says,

“Your sister says we have something in common that she’d like to discuss?” She looks at just Hilda then, eyes very confused and searching. Hilda looks at those eyes and then at Zelda. She’s smug, but there’s pain and fear there, too.

“I think you’ll find the corner table will suit your needs better,” Hilda finally chokes out.

“I hate to admit it, but you’re right,” Zelda says, gliding out of the booth and toward the quiet, unpopulated back. She says over her shoulder as she goes, “I don’t suppose Lon Chaney, Jr. has a liquor license?”

“No. But I’ll get you fixed up.” Zelda turns fully, raises a brow:

“You’d better be right.”


	9. Chapter 9

Hilda’s once again lying nude and sweaty and panting next to a nude and sweaty and panting Mary Wardwell.

They’re on top of Mary’s generic comforter bought from a big box store, breathing at each other in afterglow.

Hilda’s watching the rotations of the ceiling fan, and she places her hand on Mary’s forearm, gets a hot chill at the contact.

Mary sighs heavily, says,

“Maybe this isn't the right time to talk about this—”

“The costs and benefits of using DDT to combat malaria?” Hilda says hopefully. Mary laughs, says,

“I debate that point only after at least half a blunt.”

“Interesting. And noted,” Hilda says.

There is a long silence in the dark, and then Mary says,

“I don’t particularly like talking to your sister, but the experience has nevertheless proved—informative.”

“Oh?” Hilda says. She’s torn.

She wants to gain as much information as she can. She is as intrigued about Mary’s thought processes as she is suspicious about her sister’s motives. Zelda has always been Zelda—the one-uppper, the alpha. As much as Hilda knows Mary is confused and searching, she also knows Zelda needs to prove herself. And it’s often been easier for Zelda to prove herself with her body. But on the other hand, she knows they’ve both been traumatized by being robbed of bodily autonomy, which is why she’d insisted that they speak to each other in the first place. 

So maybe she wants to know, and maybe she doesn’t. Either way, it’s not really her business although she very much cares about both women’s respective well-being.

“Yes,” Mary says. “She told me a lot of things. I told her a lot of things. But I think she didn’t tell me everything.”

Mary’s eyes cut across Hilda’s body, and Hilda gets that hot chill again, feels the hairs on her arms stand up. Mary continues:

“I think you’re the only one I could ever really be honest with. And Zelda probably feels the same. Given what I now know about her.”

“Oh?” Hilda wills herself to say instead of being idiotically silent. It’s a stupid thing to say, but she doesn’t have anything else.

“Yes,” Mary says. “I appreciate what you were trying to do in getting us together. And our experiences were certainly… adjacent. But I don’t remember what happened to me, what I was used for. But she does.”

Hilda has suspected as much, but it’s still horrifying to actually know. She realizes belatedly that her fingernails are digging into Mary’s forearm, and she releases her hold, runs soothing fingertips over the punctures. Mary finishes,

“Maybe my body remembers. But I remain unconvinced. I don’t feel the need to consume human flesh. The only common denominator is the desire to be close to you. But maybe Lilith inherited that from me. Or maybe you’re a red herring. After all, who in their right mind wouldn’t want you?”

“Shall I give you a list of people who wouldn’t want me alphabetically, or—”

Mary kisses her silent and then says,

“I don’t know how it might come up organically, but you’ve got to talk to your sister about—” Hilda places a finger against Mary’s lips, says,

“I’ve been trying. She’s stubborn.” 

Mary takes Hilda’s finger into her mouth, runs her teeth against both knuckles, circles her tongue at the tip, and then she releases it, says,

“I’ve got a joint in my desk. Want to debate the best ways to get rid of disease-ridden mosquitoes?”

“I’m up for debating anything but what we’ve been talking about.”

xxx

Zelda’s at her desk at the Academy, annotating sheet music. Her office door is open, so Hilda is leaning against the threshold, watching Zelda in her reading glasses.

Finally Zelda feels herself being watched and looks up, deposits her reading glasses on the desk.

“What?” Zelda says.

“I had an interesting conversation the other day with Mary Wardwell,” Hilda says.

Zelda rolls her eyes, shuffles the papers on her desk.

“So that’s what we’re calling it.”

Hilda disregards the innuendo, says,

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Their eyes meet briefly, and Zelda’s hands are frantically trying to look busy and ultimately being folded in her lap. Her eyes mirror her hands, first at Hilda’s then here and there and up and down. And finally now toward a sconce at the upper right corner of the room as she says,

“What good would that have done? You would’ve gotten upset, tried to fix me somehow. I’d much rather be broken on my own terms without hurting you.”

“Ok,” Hilda says, even though she doesn’t find it at all ok. She’s got the shoulders to carry this burden, but Zelda can’t see that. Zelda can’t see that anyone might be willing to help her.

xxx

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day at the shooting range.

Hilda pays her discounted rate and then shoots and shoots.

It’s a .357 magnum, very pointedly not the .32 Zelda had used to kill her in 1926 or the .38 Zelda had used to kill her in 1959 or the 9 mm Zelda had used to kill her in 1993. When Zelda uses a firearm she means business—quick and efficient and to prove a particular point. Hilda can respect that, but she prefers a more intimate approach. If she must be killed, she’d rather something personal and measured rather than something easy.

But anyway here she is at the shooting range, depositing rounds perfectly into the target's center mass. 

It’s a better stress outlet than most activities. And she’s a better shot than most.

She smells like sulfur when she gets home, and she likes it.

xxx

“Sabrina’s at Theo’s tonight,” Zelda says around her Danish newspaper.

Hilda has just walked through the door, has not even taken off her coat yet. She says,

“Ok?”

Zelda looks up. 

“So you’re not obligated to stay for dinner,” Zelda says.

“And what would you have me do instead?” Hilda says.

“I’m sure Miss Wardwell could use some company,” Zelda says acidly. She throws down her newspaper and takes up a different one from the stack in front of her, flips it open dramatically.

“Are you jealous?” Hilda says.

Zelda scoffs.

“That’s not an answer,” Hilda says.

Zelda looks over the top of page six, says,

“I don’t need you to tell me I should feel bad. I know you want to, but I can’t bring myself to subject myself to your ideas of morality.” She folds the paper in front of her and continues, “Faustus did things to me. And they’re none of your business. It’s none of your business what I like and don’t like, what I consented to and didn’t consent to. You and Mary Wardwell can mutually masturbate about her level of consent to your heart’s content, but it’s not the same. Get fucked, Hildegard.” Zelda stands, makes toward the stairway.

Hilda stills her with a hand on her wrist. Hilda says,

“I know the difference. Do you?”

Zelda grips the railing. She looks at Hilda, says,

“Don’t try me, sister.”

Zelda wrenches her hand away and continues up the stairs.

Hilda leans against the kitchen counter and thinks. She pours herself two fingers of whiskey and thinks further.

xxx

Zelda’s in her own bed in her own pajamas. 

Hilda enters.

It’s not that she doesn’t respect Zelda’s privacy. It’s not that she doesn’t respect Zelda’s autonomy. It’s just that she believes Zelda is waiting for her.

And when she opens the door and sees Zelda’s face, she knows she’s right.

xxx

Hilda fixes pancakes.

There is bacon and boysenberry syrup.

Zelda doesn’t look at her newspaper.

Zelda instead indulges herself.

xxx

Zelda’s got a mouthful of saturated pancake. And Hilda says,

“What is the truth? Are you you?”

Zelda swallows. And then she rolls her eyes. She takes up a forkful of pancake and says,

“I’m always me. But what do you have to say for yourself?”


	10. Chapter 10

Hilda slows her knitting so she can focus on two things at once. She says,

“Has the house ban on Mary Wardwell been lifted, or…?”

Zelda’s bent over the record player, shoving her reading glasses back up her nose as she attempts to replace the diamond tip of the needle.

Hilda prefers to open a conversation like this when Zelda’s a bit distracted, but as Zelda cranes her neck and scowls over her shoulder, Hilda knows she’s miscalculated. This isn’t distracted Zelda she’s dealing with. This is already frustrated with what should’ve been a simple task but proved otherwise Zelda. Hilda speeds up her knitting again, tries to be nonchalant. Zelda drops the implements she’s been unsuccessfully manipulating, turns, straightens. Hilda continues knitting, knits and purls even faster, almost frantic in her attempt to appear casual.

“House ban?” Zelda raises an eyebrow, and her shoulders lift imposingly. “Is that how we’re playing it?” Hilda doesn’t look at her, still thinks she’s got a chance to pretend hard enough for both of them. Zelda’s movements are swift and striking, as if she’d practiced. Perhaps she had, although it remains to be seen what other circumstance might warrant this particular trick. It’s a few quick flicks of her wrist, and she’s snatched the 45 converter out of the console and flung it directly into Hilda’s index fingers. Hilda yelps and drops her half-formed beanie, needles clacking against each other and the 45 converter and then the hardwood floor.

“House ban,” Zelda repeats. She barks one laugh and puffs up even further, her back rigid, her shoulders stiff. “My reasonable request that you don’t fuck that silly, obnoxious woman who used to be inhabited by the current deity of our coven under our roof where I have to see her stupid face and be reminded of all the horrible things that have befallen us over the last half a year is now filed under my perceived power and control fantasies? I can’t have a preference or set a boundary about who entertains themselves in my home without being branded an autocrat? That would suit you, wouldn’t it? If I had an iron fist and exercised it at will. Then it could be poor, put-upon Hilda indulging her asshole sister, capitulating to her asshole sister or else. A perfect martyr, that poor, put-upon Hilda. Poor, put-upon Hilda who certainly doesn’t manipulate everyone into emotional nudity they’re not ready for just to satisfy her own masturbatory savior complex!”

“I didn’t mean to—” Hilda starts rather shakily.

“Don’t. You could always talk your way out of responsibility!”

“Not always—” Hilda wants to say so much more, but Zelda’s angrily saying,

“You’re right. Not always.”

Zelda’s eyes flash. It’s a particularly dangerous flash.

It’s been a while since Zelda’s used the iron fireplace tongs. The poker is an old favorite, but the tongs take a special sort of anger and finesse.

xxx

Each death is different.

Each is the same in its way—darkness, choking awake, alert and aware and cogent so acutely it’s painful with every individual nerve being reborn.

But the in between, the shadow of the valley. It smells the same, tastes the same—all rainwater and dandelions—but it feels different every time.

She’s met the false God, she’s met different versions of herself, she’s met angels and demons and prophets and lounge singers and insurance agents.

Hilda doesn’t know where exactly she goes when she goes, but she knows she goes. And each time is always a trip. A trip and a half.

Most times—after she pulls herself out of her temporary grave and takes a long, hot shower and adjusts to an established life again—she treats whatever visions she’d had as an elaborate dream. Disconcerting, yes. Life-changing, no. But sometimes something in that morbid interim is so palpable it sticks in her newly remade brain in such a way that she can’t ignore it, must address it at least and at most lean into it. Prophecies, omens, portends. Those are witch things she can abide even if she can’t understand.

This time, though.

Iron tongs to the temple. Searing pain. Darkness.

A voice:

“Oh. Hello again.”

“God damn it,” Hilda says in recognition. It’s still dark, but there is light blooming in her periphery—the dark, damp hellscape brightening incrementally.

“Yes. Well,” Lilith-as-Mary’s voice says.

It’s not a light flipped on. It’s a light on a dimmer switch, notching up and up, brighter and brighter.

And suddenly the figure of Mary Wardwell is in a corset and draped over a red velvet settee. It’s still a hellscape, but a homier one. Or perhaps a more decadent one. Some mixture of the two. 

“I’m so honored that you should visit me,” Mary’s sexy Lilith voice says.

“It wasn’t my choice,” Hilda says. Lilith’s Mary eyes penetrate her.

“Wasn’t it, though?”

Lilith in Mary’s body stands, prances and preens. She pauses in a tableau at the settee she’d previously been draped over, says,

“I’ve finally got what I want and what I deserve. Shouldn’t you? Haven’t you worked as hard as I have?”

xxx

It’s barely dawn. Zelda is fretting on the porch.

Hilda coughs up grave dirt.

It’s as if she’d practiced it. The 45 converter careens into Zelda’s forehead. Hilda doesn’t watch. She stalks up the stairs and takes a long, hot shower.

xxx

Hilda’s knocking on Mary’s door.

Mary appears, in her silk robe half open to half reveal her bathing suit.

“I was just about to get in the hot tub,” Mary says.

“May I join you?” Hilda says.

Mary nods.

The heat of the hot tub is nothing compared to actual hell. But has Hilda been there or just to an approximation?

She adjusts, and a jet is working on an adhesion between ribs.

Mary looks at her, and she feels the stare.

“What are you thinking about?” Mary says.

“I prefer not to think,” Hilda says. “Thinking usually lands me in hot water.”

Mary laughs, says,

“Hot water can be such a balm.”


	11. Chapter 11

Hilda is in the back garage, her whole weight used to counter the tire and its suctioned fealty to its rim. She’s pulling on the pry bar with all the force she can manage. 

Finally a pop. She releases rubber from steel. 

There are chalk marks at valve stem and puncture site. She grinds, files, patches. All the while Mary Wardwell has propped herself on an overturned five-gallon bucket and is chatting away about a panel on conscious discipline she attended last week. Hilda has lived through so many changes in professional jargon, mostly medical as a nurse and medic and midwife, but she’d always been the one to attend school events, so educational jargon as well. She wonders if she and Zelda should write a book—Zelda knew all the political jargon. But it might become suspicious when all their primary sources are not contemporary journals but just the assertion that they were there. She suggests the idea to Mary rather off-handedly, and Mary laughs, says she’d be more than happy to help with research so they wouldn’t have to cite themselves as sources too much.

It’s quick and sweaty work. A half hour perhaps top to bottom, and Hilda has reintigrated the tire and rim and replaced it on the hub. Mary insists on doing the rest. Hilda likes watching her do so. If she smoked, she’d be doing it now, admiring Mary bent over, arching, moving surely and swiftly manipulating lug nuts and then the jack.

It’s not a holistic solution. The patches are good, but the tire is compromised. It’s a certain kind of magic how nails on gravel roads always find the same spots in a tire. And the tread wear is abnormal from having been deflated and reinflated several times before being repaired. And that’s not even taking into account how when she’d removed it she’d noticed the rotors could use turned. But she’s plugged what had needed plugged. Holes are filled. However temporarily. 

Hilda traps Mary against the driver’s door to wipe her fingers with a pink shop rag, and Mary kisses her languidly. And then Mary sighs, checks her watch, curses under her breath.

The Lincoln Towncar rolls out of the garage. Mary leans out her open window,

“Thanks so much!”

And it’s a silver streak against the silver afternoon.

She’s got parent-teacher conferences tonight, had hopped over on her lunch break to get her tire fixed. They won’t see each other again until the weekend unless Mary drinks too much coffee and works herself up stifling her responses to out-of-touch moms with speak-to-the-manager bobs who are convinced their asshole kid can turn a twenty-nine percent into a seventy percent by retaking one vocabulary quiz. 

Lilith in Mary’s body could endure parent-teacher conferences and still want to have a few too many drinks and fuck afterward, but regular Mary typically needs more rest, more decompression. Hilda gets it, has begun to like it.

The back garage not only houses most of the more specialized tools but also a lot of ancient bric-a-brac in cardboard boxes or plastic tubs or steamer trunks—stuff sentimentally relevant enough not to be thrown away but anachronistic and extraneous enough to be relegated to this relatively remote location. She’s got nothing better to do, and she’s already sweaty and dusty.

Hilda’s rummaging through and reminiscing about a heavy oak chest exclusively filled with out-of-fashion hats when she smells the smoke. She looks up. Zelda is standing there at the open garage door, backlit and rigid, one hand on her hip, the other holding a cigarette.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice, sister,” Zelda says.

Hilda’s sitting rather stiffly on a creeper, a crimson cloche with a white satin band in her lap. She gingerly places the hat back in the chest, says,

“Hmm?”

Zelda takes three steps into the garage, and Hilda can now discern her features, can see the haughtiness in her face, the tension in her shoulders.

They make eye contact and retain it for an uncomfortable beat until Zelda flits her eyes to the small puddle of oil on the floor that Mary’s car had left. And then Zelda straightens her spine even more—Hilda thinks it must be painful to do so—as she takes a drag. She opens her mouth to speak, and then her expression changes, her posture wavers. She says finally,

“There’s a perfectly good spell for routine auto maintenance.”

“I like to work with my hands,” Hilda says.

Zelda looks at her, looks at the open chest of hats.

“You like to show off.” She extinguishes her cigarette in the tire test tank. “And why shouldn’t you?”

Zelda shakes her head slowly and solemnly and turns to exit. Then over her shoulder says,

“For the record, the Wardwell embargo has not been rescinded.”

Hilda bites back a reply likening her sister to Fidel Castro and decides not to think about Zelda and her weird hang ups and jealousies and issues at all.

She, instead, pulls a different trunk off some metal shelving, this one filled with old letters and loose photographs and dried flowers and mismatched gloves. The wrong thing to look at if she’s trying not to think of Zelda. But she looks anyway.

xxx

Hilda’s had half a bottle of Malbec and is quite cozy on the parlor divan with a saucy novel and a quilt. It’s maybe 9pm.

She’d eaten a late dinner with only Ambrose, which had allowed them to be as loud and silly as they liked, which was very loud and very silly. Sabrina had been at a football game, and Zelda had been skulking around somewhere. She’ll pretend, if questioned, that she was working on her formal petition to the Council, but she won’t be questioned. She skulks around quite a lot nowadays and is questioned about it very little. 

Hilda is past thinking about it. Every time she’s tried, it’s ended badly. This is Zelda’s special personal burden, and if she wants help with it, she’ll either come to someone or die of it. The Church of Lilith is a bad patch, little better than a little aerosol poly-ethylene. Alas. Hilda’s got her own problems anyway.

It’s maybe 9pm, and Hilda’s cozy and tipsy and alternately reads and dozes. 

And then a chirp from her phone on the coffee table.

Hilda stretches, yawns, retrieves her phone lazily.

It’s Mary, of course. And she’s announcing the end of her Baxter High responsibilities. But it’s not a goodnight text. It’s an invitation. 

_Conferences let out a little early. Would like to thank you properly for the tire. Meet me for drinks?_

Hilda blinks. Is this what Sabrina and her friends would label a booty call? She types back:

_Tempting. Pick me up?_

She’s already folding the quilt to drape it over the back of the couch and then ascending the stairs to get redressed.

_10 min._

The text comes in as she’s taking off her nightgown. She responds:

_Don’t honk. Cut off the headlights. I’ll be waiting for you._

xxx

Hilda doesn’t exactly know what it feels like to be a teenager sneaking out at night to meet an illicit lover as she had not been that teenager. She’d been the rule follower. Well. She’d been the obvious-rule follower. She’d found it easy to follow the obvious rules, the rules that would make her look right so that she could follow her own rules privately and think whatever and however she wanted to think. Zelda had so often been the opposite. Zelda had been caught sneaking out maybe twenty percent of the times she’d actually done it. But she had always had a dark scripture verse on her tongue to defend her actions. Zelda had been obvious in her rebellion and zealous and fundamental in her thought patterns.

So Hilda hastily clothes herself in an outfit better suited to Rizzo shimmying down a drain pipe and hopping into Kenickie’s convertible or Zelda blowing smoke rings into Edward’s face as she disappeared out the kitchen door to go dance at a honky tonk.

She stands in the middle of the driveway with her hands in the pockets of her tight slacks until headlights blink at the road and she waves and starts walking and the lights extinguish. 

A silver flash against a silver night. 

She slides into the passenger seat.

“I appreciate a woman who can follow directions,” Hilda says.

Mary clicks her tongue, opens her mouth to say something. But then she looks at Hilda in the moonlight and dash light, says instead,

“I can certainly do that.”

Mary speeds off toward town, taking unpaved side roads in the woods at a dangerous clip. No wonder her front passenger tire had had so many punctures.

“Are we headed toward a bar?” Hilda finally says.

“Yes,” Mary says. “I was under the impression you liked the noise.”

“I do, generally. But tonight maybe I just want the noises you make.”

Mary skids to a halt and then executes a tight u-turn. No wonder her front passenger tire had had so many punctures.

xxx

Mary’s eyes are a little wild as she pours two glasses of merlot. Hilda knows she’s still trying to be civilized, to be a good hostess. But Hilda also knows what they are to each other. She might have a romantic fantasy here or there, spurred on by her paperbacks. And of course there’s their very real history because of Lilith. A tightrope they’ve both chosen to negotiate.

Mary downs her glass, refills it.

“There’s no reason for you to feel guilty,” Hilda says.

And Mary looks at her then, again downs her glass. Mary says, voice ragged,

“I don’t. I feel a lot of things. None of them particularly guilty. You’re projecting.”

“Why should I feel guilty?” Hilda says.

Mary drops to her knees, begins unbuttoning Hilda’s slacks.

“None of my business, really,” Mary says as she pulls Hilda’s slacks and underwear down in one fluid movement.


	12. Chapter 12

“So let me get this straight. Just so we’re perfectly clear.” Zelda’s pacing the potato row, angrily smoking a cigarette as Hilda’s on her hands and knees pulling up beets the next row over. “You’re willing to wake up early and stand in line to suck the Baxter High PTO’s dick to make bierocks for their off-brand Oktoberfest, but you can’t be bothered to support your own sister’s—your own coven’s—Mabon?” She clicks her tongue in derision, deliberately leans so she can ash her cigarette close to Hilda’s knee. Hilda doesn’t look at her, continues her work, says,

“The school district’s calendar is set two years in advance. They email it to you the same time they email it to me.” But as she’s talking so reasonably, she feels Zelda’s vulgar bait slipping down her throat, the hook lodging, and she continues even though she knows she shouldn’t let herself flop on the line like this. “It’s not any kind of Oktoberfest, brand name or otherwise. It’s Homecoming. Every school has one, even the Academy.”

Zelda scoffs, says,

“The Academy has Mabon. Because witches have Mabon. Because it’s the equinox, which is astronomically fixed. Fuck your two-years-out district calendar.”

Hilda’s still stupidly trying to swallow the worm, the hook sinking deeper:

“But you very well know we have a rather wide window for that—a fortnight, at least. But you as High Priestess set the date of the actual festival to conflict with mortal traditions as some twisted power play.” 

Zelda barks one horrible, mean laugh, says,

“You think because you’re fucking the principal you’ll get to ride in a convertible in the parade doing a Miss America wave while the band marches behind you playing a juvenile, out of tune Stars and Stripes Forever? You’re wrong, sweet sister. That woman doesn’t care about you. That woman only uses you for her own purposes. Mortals are that way. They can’t be trusted.”

Hilda scoots the wicker basket of dirt-streaked beets away from her, turns to face her sister. She looks at Zelda’s rigid body, the cigarette that has been furiously smoked all the way to the filter, the eyes that are focusing on something far away.

The hook’s in. The line is taut. 

Zelda lights another cigarette from the butt of the first and says,

“You’ll arrive at the football field with your three dozen bierocks, get taken from behind bent over the concession stand countertop—”

“Oh quit it, Zelds. I can provide the bierocks for the PTO and still do whatever it is you want me to at Mabon. You don’t have to be crass about it.”

Zelda looks at her finally. Her eyes are smug: she’s successfully reeled her in.

xxx

It’s brisk. Not chilly, really. The ambient temperature is still warm, but the breeze makes it seem cooler. 

Hilda throws a cardigan over her flannel and ambles along the back lawn until she finds Zelda sitting on a moss-covered log in front of the roaring bonfire, drinking directly from a bottle of red wine, gesticulating wildly with her cigarette as she’s talking to a younger witch Hilda’s not sure she’s ever seen before.

Hilda extends her hands and warms her fingers at the flames. The younger witch nods and nods. Hilda interrupts their conversation,

“And here I’d thought Mabon was about being grateful for a bountiful harvest and celebrating the sunlight even as it retreats from us, not trying to fuck 19-year-olds.” 

Zelda downs the rest of the wine, throws the bottle onto the fire, says,

“More than one thing can be true.”

“Funny how you think that only when it applies to you,” Hilda says.

The young witch says,

“Um. Should I—”

“Yes, you should,” Hilda says. “You’d probably prefer the high school football game, in fact.”

The young witch looks at Zelda for confirmation, but Zelda is looking only at her sister, the firelight reflected in her blue-green eyes and on her fiery hair, the heat from the fire cold compared to what’s emanating from her.

The young witch clears her throat, doesn’t elicit any response from either older witch when she does so and so slinks off, leaving Zelda staring at Hilda and Hilda frowning back at Zelda.

“Maybe you’d be happier if you were trying to fuck a 19 year old rather than that mousy mortal spinster,” Zelda says, reaching behind her and retrieving another bottle of wine. She looks at it confusedly for a second with her fingers wrapped around the neck. She snaps the fingers of her other hand, and the cork pops out straight into the fire—instant sparks and then a fizzle as Zelda laughs. Hilda watches this entire half-drunken display before she responds:

“And maybe you’d be happier if you didn’t drink so much.”

Zelda makes eye contact and takes a long pull from the wine bottle, then says,

“Mabon celebrates wine-making, too. Are you a true witch or not?”

“You seem to have made up your mind about me on that point already.”

“Hmm, well. More than one thing can be true.”

“You’ve already said that, and I didn’t believe it the first time,” Hilda says. 

Zelda laughs and takes another drink. She says,

“It’s called a motif, sister. I guess one doesn’t osmotically acquire literary terminology by fucking the English teacher.”

“You’re drunk and tedious and even more pretentious than usual. I’ll be sure to send that 19 year old back over to you on my way out.”

Hilda turns, begins walking toward the house. Zelda’s suddenly teleported to right in front of her.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Hildegard. Didn’t I kill you for less not more than two weeks ago?”

Hilda is arrested, frozen in fear for a moment. But then:

“You don’t have a weapon. You’re going to strangle me at an autumn festival? Make a scene at your own party? What would your congregation think?”

Hilda brushes past her, keeps walking up the gravel drive. She hears Zelda’s pumps crunching behind her and then Zelda’s voice,

“They might think it was a good start to an orgy if I played my cards right.”

Hilda wheels around to face her, says acidly,

“The last time I witnessed you playing cards, you didn’t have a full deck.”

Zelda’s eyes flash darkly.

They’re not even a meter away from each other.

And Zelda pounces. She doesn’t take a running start, doesn’t have to, just lurches and tackles Hilda to the ground. It’s a lot of grappling and wrestling until one of Zelda’s hands has gripped both of Hilda’s wrists and pinned them above Hilda’s head and the other hand has closed around Hilda’s throat. Hilda’s bucking her hips, trying to kick Zelda off, but Zelda’s longer body is subduing her pretty effectively.

“This violence looks like the beginning of an orgy to your followers?” Hilda croaks out. “No wonder I’m a heretic who prefers mousy spinsters.”

Zelda shoots up as if Hilda’s body has burned her. She smooths her skirt, runs a hand through her hair, says,

“Oh get fucked, Hildegard.”

Hilda lies on the cool ground regaining her breath but still manages to say,

“But that’s your problem, isn’t it? That I’m getting fucked without you.”


	13. Chapter 13

Hilda is up early. Well. Not especially early for her, just earlier than everyone else. After all, she hadn’t been drinking the night before as everyone else had. She prepares a generous breakfast, knowing everyone’s hangovers will appreciate it. 

The dining table already boasts bacon and sausage on a baking sheet covered by a paper towel, a quiche, a fresh fruit salad, sliced tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs.

She’s just taking a coffee cake out of the oven when she hears someone on the stairs.

It’s that child she hadn’t ever seen before. That young witch Zelda had been seducing at the bonfire, draped in one of Hilda’s own bathrobes, mascara streaked across her face.

They make eye contact briefly. And then Hilda double checks that all the kitchen appliances are shut off and grabs her keys from the hook by the door, exits without even taking off her apron.

Hilda can endure a lot of things. Hilda has, in fact, endured a lot of things. She’s lived through wars and financial crises and Great Awakenings and revolutions political and sexual. And she’s come out the other side wiser but still herself. She’s witnessed Zelda enduring these things, as well. Stress affects different personalities differently, of course. And she could always get it even if she didn’t like it.

But this latest revolution. This latest regime change, so intimate—not a mortal war or economic depression but something affecting witches specifically. It’s something she’s not used to and is trying to work through. And Zelda’s trying to work through it the way Zelda works through most adversities, which is to say physically.

She gets it. She understands to an extent. But she doesn’t like it.

xxx

Hilda doesn’t know where she’s going. She just drives, the radio loud enough to drown out her thoughts, taking whatever turns she feels appropriate—pavement, gravel, dirt, gravel, pavement again. Before she knows it, she’s two counties away pulling into the mostly full parking lot of an Episcopal church with a hand-painted sign advertising their “53rd Annual Arts and Crafts Bazaar.”

She walks the aisles created by long folding tables, trying to focus herself on the pewter figurines and glass beads and hand-made earrings on display. But she finds herself mostly just walking around in a stunned somnambulance until she’s not even in the cramped fellowship hall at all but a secluded little chapel just off the choir loft, on her knees on the ugly green carpet, elbows propped on a polished oak pew.

It seems the right time and place to revisit her secret comfort of Old Testament prophets. She opens the Bible app on her phone—hidden in a folder called “other stuff” that mostly includes applications that came with the phone but could not be deleted even though they are completely useless to her.

Funny. She’d thought the account of Elijah being fed by ravens was longer, more detailed, more dramatic. In her brain the incident took on more nuance, certainly. But really it is only a few passing verses. That figures. Her secret comfort turns out to be no comfort at all.

She shifts her weight and huffs. And then she rests her forehead on her crossed forearms on the back of the pew in front of her.

It’s all she can do to not call out to the false god. His prophets are all generally so relatable and ridiculous, so shouldn’t he be, too, as it logically follows?

However, she’s not sure she believes in any prophets at all, any god at all. Certainly not Lilith. 

Lilith, to her specific and personal knowledge, doesn’t cultivate prophets. Just likes pretty ladies to sit on her face before she disappears without a word. Lilith, to her specific and personal knowledge, cultivates nothing but her own schemes.

And why shouldn’t she?

If magic is actually what Hilda suspects it to be, why shouldn’t Lilith—first witch, first woman—take her pleasure and do what she wilt?

Hilda’s mulling over these theological quandaries with her head bowed in an Episcopal prayer chapel. 

And she suddenly feels a soft hand on her shoulder, a hot breath on her neck.

“You’re quite the piece of work, Hildegard.”

It’s Lilith as Mary’s voice.

Hilda doesn’t open her eyes, doesn’t raise her head. 

“You’re one to talk,” Hilda murmurs against her own forearm.

“You’re trying to provoke me somehow. But I won’t be provoked. I just want to talk to you.”

Hilda burrows her face farther into her forearm on the backrest, says,

“Like—like heaven, like hell, like whatever—you do.”

There is a long silence. Lilith finally laughs, says,

“I do want to talk to you, though.”

Hilda raises her head but doesn’t turn toward the voice, says,

“Talk, then.”

“How would you like to be a High Priestess?” Lilith says. Hilda says,

“How dare you! You know good and well I’ve been begging you to bless my sister and her church! You know I don’t want to have anything to do with you!”

A low preternatural rumbling that might be construed as laughter, and then Lilith’s voice as discernible by human ears again,

“A prophet, then?”

Another pause.

“Prophets always have it the hardest. But I guess I’m used to that.”

Hilda turns then and looks at who is speaking to her.

The thing that is mostly a burst of light and a thousand eyes and wings but also somehow also the calm countenance of Mary Wardwell says,

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“What a cock up this is,” Hilda says.

“And don’t I know it,” Mary’s voice in a demonic or perhaps angelic body says.

The light of the thing fades, and Hilda’s somnambulance returns, and she’s again roaming the long folding tables of handmade knickknacks.

xxx

Hilda drives again, winding, aimless.

She’s never been the religious one of the family, and yet here she is having been visited by the current deity. Here she is having fucked the current deity.

She attempts to turn up the radio, but it’s already at maximum volume.

She’s now a fourth county over, pulling into the mostly full parking lot of a trashy casino. 

She deposits a ten dollar bill into a slot machine.  
But through the bells and whistles and tinny electronic music, she hears Lilith in the back of her brain.

Telling her, asking her, accusing her, inviting her.

Intermittent reward. That’s the appeal of a slot machine. But it’s also the appeal of Lilith.

xxx

Hilda rings the doorbell. Once. Twice. Thrice. And then she texts.

Mary—real, mortal, palpable—is out back practicing with her bow. A blunt-tipped practice arrow pierces the very center of the target.

Hilda can get this. Hilda can like this. A firearm is more powerful, but a bow is better exercise. And Mary’s shapely arms attest to the latter.

“Have you ever shot one before?” Mary says.

“Not for a long time,” Hilda says.

“Time to try again?”

“A welcome distraction.”

They spend the afternoon together. Target shooting and then not that at all.

Hilda tries not to see Lilith as she and Mary kiss in the hot tub.

xxx

Hilda’s halfway to sleep in the very firm guest bed in the second bedroom. It had been her bedroom for a time. But now it’s the bedroom she retreats to when she can’t stand to look at Zelda.

She’s drifting, her mind blank and bleary and thinking up fantastical solutions to the moth problem in the fruit and nut trees.

The dream-fall feeling and sudden wakefulness.

Zelda’s at the threshold calling her name with some amount of annoyance.

“What?” Hilda says. Zelda stands there, eyes closed, jaw tight.

“I miss you,” Zelda says.

Hilda scoffs.

“Not enough.”

Zelda huffs, readjusts herself against the doorframe:

“And what would be enough, according to your rigid standards?” 

Hilda sits up:

“I’m the one with rigid standards?”

Now Zelda scoffs.

“You are positively insufferable, and I hate myself for chasing after you the way I do,” Zelda says as she executes a quick turn and slams the bedroom door shut behind her.

Hilda barely registers the admission as she falls back into a half dream.


	14. Chapter 14

Hilda’s sitting on a dilapidated dock, bare feet dangling in the cold water. Mary Wardwell is beside her, casting a line into the preternaturally placid green-brown water of the man-made lake. She reels in a bit, line just this side of taut.

Their shoulders brush accidentally more often than to really be an accident. Hilda keeps silent. The fish don’t like noise. Allegedly.

She watches Mary’s neck, triceps, chest. Mary languidly reels in—one rotation—her eyes still on the water and her bobber that is a yellow happy face.

“It’s just an old wives’ tale, you know,” Mary says. “We can talk. If you want.”

“I don’t want. Can’t we just be quiet here? In nature?”

Mary hums, and their shoulders brush against each other again.

Hilda’s thinking about the Old Testament again—specifically the widow’s dead child and how Elijah had laid himself out upon him to bring his breath back into him. She’s thinking of being a prophet beholden unto so many whims and prayers. Fate. She’d never considered herself a Calvinist and yet.

“Nature is hardly ever quiet,” Mary says.

Mary’s right, of course. Even as they sit, shoulders brushing, there are crickets and cicadas and bullfrogs and mockingbirds and squirrels and the wind through the trees.

Mary takes a cautious look around and then bends. They kiss. As Hilda starts to bring a hand to Mary’s scalp, Mary suddenly jerks away. She yanks on her fishing pole and reels furiously. Hilda watches Mary’s face change from curious to excited to focused to frustrated. Mary slams the pole down on the dock, turns to Hilda:

“I’m stuck on a submerged branch. Again.”

Hilda watches Mary’s face change from frustrated to lustful.

“What if I cut the line and forgot we were out here to fish?”

“What if?” Hilda says, knife already in hand. She leans over Mary to slice the nylon and then Mary’s hands are at her collar, pulling her down on top of her.

Hilda is laid out on top of Mary on the dock. She drops the knife so she can fist Mary’s hair as they kiss. Her elbows connect with the weather-beaten wood, and her hips connect with Mary’s hips.

“Do you still want to be quiet in nature?” Mary says.

“No point, really,” Hilda says.

xxx

The next morning, Zelda’s arranging flowers in a vase on the dining table. She’s hunched over and so very concentrated. Hilda’s still on the staircase, watching.

Zelda huffs and straightens. She mutters something to herself and then rounds the table. She admires her work a moment before she shakes out a newspaper and sits primly at her spot.

Hilda finally descends the remaining few stairs.

“Have you had your coffee yet?” Hilda says. She knows she hasn’t, but she asks anyway.

“No,” Zelda says, voice muted by newspaper.

Hilda rummages around in the cabinets for the old percolator and coffee grinder. They hadn’t used this set-up in decades.

“What’s the occasion?” Zelda says when Hilda presents to her a cup of extra dark and smooth percolated coffee, with egg and shells as a good robust Swedish coffee should be.

“Just felt like it, is all,” Hilda says as she again takes in the beauty of Zelda’s floral arrangement, tastes the beauty of the rich coffee.

They’re both making an effort for each other and denying it, pretending it’s merely selfish indulgence, pretending they haven’t been thinking of each other more than usual, pretending and pretending different things to each other and to themselves.

Zelda extricates the page with the crossword, slides it across the table to Hilda.

Zelda can read Greek and get riled up about the op eds, but doing puzzles in Greek is a little beyond her abilities. But it’s not beyond Hilda’s. 

This could be seen as a truce. 

But they’re both too stubborn for that.

“Thanks, love, but I’m much too busy,” Hilda says, rising from the table. It’s half a lie, but it’s what she’s going with at this juncture.

Zelda throws the newspaper down and just about overturns her chair as she also rises:

“I’m very busy, too.”

xxx

Hilda’s in the solarium.

Her tomatoes are doing well in this hot house, and so are her roses. But roses do whatever they want. Roses are hearty jerks, their roots taking hold and spindling anywhere, flowering despite themselves. Roses are attractive and aromatic but at baseline opportunists. 

She prunes and prods anyway.

A cool breeze, a door’s slamming, and then,

“Figured I’d find you here.”

It’s a line, and Hilda could’ve expected it from anyone.

But it’s Mary. Hopefully it’s Mary. Rather than Lilith as Mary. 

This is her real life. She hasn’t been in some religious haze brought on by ill-thought-out prayer to no one. She’s here in her own greenhouse tending her own radishes.

She hedges strategically anyway.

“I’m usually easily found,” Hilda says, a statement that is palatable to any Mary that might be appearing here.

“Aren’t you just?”

Hilda still can’t figure which Mary or not Mary this might be.

Hilda continues her work. Hands and knees, denim, weeding.

She senses someone behind her. And then feels fingers trailing delicately against her ribs.

“Overalls. I could die and go to heaven.”

Real actual Mary then. Lilith would be more direct, more obscene. And also just more in general. But also less. It’s a conundrum. Who is to be believed?

Hilda locks the door that leads to the house proper regardless.

And Mary’s sitting next to a bell pepper plant. 

Hilda places herself gingerly on her lap.

Mary’s fingers are immediately manipulating the buttons of the bib, and her mouth is immediately on Hilda’s. Hilda pulls her lips away just enough to say,

“How’d you get past Zelda?” 

Mary is pulling the straps of her overalls down and then working on pushing up her white v-neck t-shirt.

“Wasn’t home. I let myself in.” Mary’s unfastened Hilda’s bra and looks up at her. “I hope you don’t mind.”

It’s the best assurance that this is not Lilith.

That’s a little suspicious in itself.

Hilda believes it when she’s initiated and has her doubts when Mary initiates. She doesn’t know whether that attitude is healthy or right. She doesn’t know whether she’s always thought this way or if it’s a new pattern precipitated by Lilith’s offer to be a High Priestess or Prophet.

But she’s on Mary’s lap and nude from the waist up and looking into her eyes. And the woman she’s with right now is very much Mary.

xxx

Zelda’s asleep. That or she’s putting on a pretty good show. But Zelda’s always been a good actress.

Hilda wavers at the doorway. 

If she hops into her own bed, it’ll be as if nothing has happened, as if everything is the same as it’s always been. And that’s not true in any sense.

If she retreats to the guest room, it’s a certain kind of acknowledgement, a certain kind of refusal and repudiation. And that’s not true either, as much as it should be.

If she slips into Zelda’s bed, it’s a different thing entirely.

She’s been wavering long enough that Zelda—eyes closed, body supine and still—says,

“Figure it out, Hildegard. You make a terrible ghost.”

xxx

Hilda folds herself onto the davenport in the study and sleeps fitfully.


	15. Chapter 15

Hilda’s in the cellar. If she were to expend the energy, she could find canned vegetables or jam from every era since they’d first reconfigured it from utilitarian dry goods storage before refrigeration into an air raid shelter and then an atomic bomb shelter and then a generic shelter for whatever new, unforeseen apocalypse might emerge in coming years.

She doesn’t have that kind of energy, though. She’s just here to replace the batteries in the flashlights—something she does every five years—and just be quiet and alone in the damp dark—something she does when she’s in a mood.

They keep a .45 revolver down here. It’s a big gun one can use to hunt for food or to defend oneself or to just feel better for having it around. 

She’d briefly dated a highway patrolman in the early ‘90s, just when cops were pretty universally switching their service weapons from revolvers to semi-automatics, and he’d always said that revolvers were the most reliable firearm. He’d said he knew a guy who’d found an old .22 revolver in the bottom of a swamp, and this guy hadn’t even had to clean it. Just swiped the sludge off it and killed a squirrel straight away. That highway patrolman had had a lot of big fish stories, but Hilda had believed him on this point because it had made sense. The action of a revolver is simple, not a lot of complicated mechanisms, just physics and steel. Clockwork.

She’s changed all the batteries and is now sitting at the little folding card table cleaning the .45–something to keep her hands busy more than anything particularly necessary—when she hears footsteps creaking on the soggy wooden steps outside.

It’s not Zelda’s confident, considering stride or Sabrina’s light, haphazard tread, or Mary’s tentative, tactful footwork. It’s clunky but not without grace. She thinks for a second that it’s that highway patrolman. He had been a very large man—6’4” at least and broad and well-muscled, too—but he could be so silent when he walked. His main hobby had been ballroom dancing. She dismisses him as a suspect. He’s been dead since ‘94, his patrol car clipped by a semi and rolled three and a half rolls before it had caught fire. Nothing but char and stray teeth and twisted metal found in the ensuing investigation into the accident.

“Auntie?” Ambrose’s voice says.

She admonishes herself: why hadn’t she thought of him? He’d been gone so long and doesn’t spend a lot of time at home. She’s not used to him again yet. There are plenty of excuses she can convince herself of if she’s so inclined. But she’s not inclined, and she suddenly acutely feels bad for having enjoyed his company, pretended nothing was wrong, joked with him like always on so many occasions. He’s been back, and she hasn’t tried to help him. Has only used him to feel normal. But she supposes they’ve been using each other. 

She supposes they both pretend normalcy for their own reasons but also for each other specifically.

“Yes, pet?” she says.

He pushes the door the rest of the way open, and his countenance appears intermittently in the wavery illumination provided by the one naked lightbulb tucked into the mud ceiling, all morose five-o-clock shadow.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he says. He stands slumping next to a shelf of homemade booze and stale, ancient cartons of long-retired brands of cigarettes.

Hilda extracts the brush from the barrel of the .45 and pushes all the gun parts away from her, places her hands on the table.

“Ok?” she says.

He sighs, slouches against the plywood shelving.

“I—Do you—” he harrumphs and turns, grabs a repurposed old-timey brown glass bottle of sloe gin fermented originally probably seventy years ago. He looks at the hand-written label and begins idly peeling at it, continuing to stare at it as he says, “You seem to be the only one dealing with this who’s sane in any way. Even Faustus, when we found him, wasn’t… himself.” He looks up just long enough to blink and gulp and then looks again at the yellowed paper on the bottle. He opens the bottle finally and chugs. And then he continues, “We found him playing roulette at a run-down casino in Wyoming, his face completely blank. When we slit his throat in the parking lot, he seemed grateful.” He takes another swig, grimaces, fixes his eyes on Hilda’s left ear. “And every night I have these dreams. I usually don’t remember them, just feel them. But when I do remember. It’s Lilith in Mary Wardwell’s skin and a too-sexy negligee. Telling me I’m an avenging angel.”

Hilda laughs. She can’t help herself although she wishes she could. A reluctant prophet and her avenging angel nephew. It’s too ridiculous.

Ambrose looks at her, his eyebrows raised, questioning, accusing.

“I’m not laughing at you, darling,” she says, but she can tell he doesn’t quite believe her. He takes another drink, shakes off his apprehension, says,

“A therapist. Do you know a therapist, a witch psychologist? Is that how you’re so—”

“I’m not. But I wish.”

xxx

It’s unseasonably warm, and Hilda has the top down on the Riviera as she drives and drives.

She slows as she approaches the Episcopal church that had had the bazaar, but the sign now is all Jesus and platitudes—nothing she’d be interested in. She presses the gas pedal.

And soon she’s close to the casino. She thinks of listless Faustus and the spinning wheel taking him nowhere—red and black and then a different red and black. She shudders and turns back toward home. But she bypasses it, as well, finds herself on the main drag of town. It’s late, and the stoplights are all blinking red four way stops, and the only other people out are teenagers who have parked their third-hand jalopies at the car wash smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap beer.

She rolls in next to another Riviera. Hers is from the ‘60s, immaculate and olive green. The one she’s just pulled up next to is rusty and battered with a matte red driver’s side door stark against the original black body, a late ‘90s trash-mobile. But Riviera people tend to stick together, recognize something in each other. She steps out and leans against her hood. 

“I could use a beer,” she says. There are two girls and two boys sitting in the bed of an S-10, all drinking and smoking menthols, all staring at her. A boy says,

“What? Are you a cop?”

“I don’t think I’d be able to run the agility course, I’m afraid,” she says. One of the girls laughs, but the others all continue staring dumbly. The girl who had laughed stands up from where she’s sitting on a cooler and opens it, rummages in the ice for a beer, walks carefully over to the edge of the tailgate. Hilda meets her there and takes the beer, pops the tab, does a “cheers” gesture. “Thanks so much, love. I don’t keep beer at my house typically. But sometimes you just have a hankering for it.”

They’re all still goat staring at her, vacant. A flash of Faustus at the roulette wheel again.

“Do you all attend Baxter High?”

A narrowing of eyes, a shuffling of sneakers, then nothing.

“Any of you in any of Miss Wardwell’s classes?” They all look at each other, and then one of the boys says in what was probably supposed to have been a whisper,

“Hot social studies chick.” There are murmurs of recognition.

“Why?” The other girl says, flicking the butt of her cigarette toward the vacuums.

“Just wondering if she has seemed off lately?” Hilda mentally kicks herself. This is a stupid errand. Unplanned and completely ludicrous. Of course she’s off. Everyone even tangentially involved is. She would’ve asked about Sabrina, but that is a foregone conclusion. The girl has three mortal friends and everyone else in her grade has always thought she was a weirdo. There’d be nothing to gauge how much all this has affected her in her social life with the public at large. Mary, though. She’d thought maybe Mary is a normal enough person whose changes might be noticed. And then maybe she could— She doesn’t know. She doesn’t have a plan. She should be looking for witch psychologists for Ambrose—discreet heretics who wouldn’t immediately turn him in to the Council. But here she is instead, encouraging the delinquency of minors and asking delinquent minors what they think of her girlfriend. Stupid. Reckless. Thoughtless.

“What?” The boy who had known who Wardwell was says. “Like. What do you mean ‘off’?” He does air quotes and drops his cigarette in the process. He tries to pick it up, burns his fingertips, curses, then stomps on it like it had all been some plot by the cigarette to hurt him.

But now the kids are all interested, looking at her with beer-shining, curious eyes. If she backs off, it’ll only intrigue them more. Does she chance it and pull out whatever she wants from their pliant little drunk brains, or just talk? Continue to be the weird lady driving around at night looking for free beer and strange conversation? Cut her losses and go?

“I just worry about her. Wanted to make sure she’s all right.” They’re all staring, trying to make sense of her.

The girl on the cooler gets up again, retrieves another beer, goes to the tailgate. Hilda realizes she’s finished the beer and that this girl had noticed before she had. She crumples the can and tosses it into her back seat and then meets the girl at the tailgate again. The girl doesn’t relinquish the beer quite yet. The girl says,

“But who’s worrying about you? Making sure you’re all right?”


	16. Chapter 16

Hilda’s moved permanently—for now, in this current era—into the spare room. 

It’s safest and easiest this way. 

They’re both working through some things. She and Zelda have their own space to cry their own tears and contemplate their own contemplations this way.

There’s plenty of precedent to cite for such a separation: they had lived on separate floors during their Academy years, had lived in separate residences when they’d both been living in Europe in different countries, had lived separately in different barracks or hospitals or adjacent structures during two different world wars, had lived in separate homes states away from each other when they’d initially come back to the US from Europe, had lived in separate rooms when they were re-acclimating to each other when they’d finally decided to live in the same house together again.

Hilda doesn’t think much of it. It’s what needs to be done for now. She gets it. She doesn’t like it exactly. But she gets it.

A lot of a lot. Apocalypse and not apocalypse.

Hilda knows Zelda’s been through so much lately. Hilda had thought—maybe naively, or maybe optimistically, or maybe some combination of the two—that Zelda had been working her way out of the depths. They’d talked a little; she’d gotten Zelda to talk to Mary a little. But all of those talks had seemed to have the opposite effect: Zelda is as tangled up and tightened up and aggressive and acerbic as she’s ever been in a time of crisis and change. A placid breeze and then a cold wind and then a balmy gust, rinse and repeat. There’s plenty of precedent.

Hilda knows Zelda’s prone to violence. She’s been on the receiving end more often than not. Hilda also knows Zelda’s prone to casual sex. She’s seen that second hand—walks of shame by plenty of beautiful people.

Of course, those previous times of crisis and change had not directly affected Zelda’s core belief system in such a way as this all has.

It’s why Hilda’s decided to move down the hall rather than skip town.

They can’t be in such close quarters without a lot of arguing and murder, but if Hilda were to really distance herself, it’d be even worse. Destruction on every scale—shattered tea cups and burned down government buildings and everything in between. Hilda needs to be here as a counterweight, a deterrent, a security blanket, a voice of reason, a scapegoat. 

She also needs to be here for herself. As much as she doesn’t want to admit it, Hilda knows she hides herself in Zelda’s volatility, finds her own meaning in her meaning in relation to Zelda. They’re tied up together in a tight plait. Individual strands are difficult to parse, especially if the rope is to be unwound.

So. Hilda’s assigned herself a new room, appointed to her specifications, outfitted with what she needs to thrive. A plush bed. A deep closet. A dressing table arrayed with creams and tinctures and different shades of lipsticks.

She’s assigned herself a new life. A girlfriend who likes her company and desires her body. A fun job filling intricate coffee orders and recommending books and mindlessly wiping tables.

Hilda relishes and cherishes these new details. She likes this construction, generally.

But she dreads falling asleep in that plush bed. Lilith might visit her in her subconscious, might remind her of the real reality of now, the real uncomfortably recent past that informs the now. Hilda’s not the kind of person to not address an issue. Although she does have quite an elaborate little dance with a lot of metaphorical veils for a lot of different types of issues. And Lilith’s intrusion into her life is just the type of beat to precipitate a different kind of dance.

Certain thoughts, certain sparks, certain wavelengths spur her on to certain avenues she’d rather not amble down and window shop along, certain places she’d rather not explore with her usual open mind and open heart. It wouldn’t be safe or easy or good to explore these. There’s plenty of precedent.

So Hilda’s closed herself off in her own bubble of her own space and her own chosen characters. But the thing about bubbles is that they tend to drift on the wind and pop wherever they see fit.

And the thing about Hilda is that she can’t not care about those closest to her.

Even though Hilda’s designated a specific place and role for herself, she can’t help but keep an ear open. 

Every night since she’s moved, Hilda finds herself tying her robe closely around her, sliding into her slippers, and creeping down the hall to listen at Zelda’s door at the witching hour. It’s always a similar scene, and Hilda always reacts the same way.

And so tonight Hilda’s listening as Zelda prays to Lilith.

It’s muffled but discernible against the door.

“Unholy Mother,” Zelda’s voice says. “Give me strength. Give me fortitude. Give me anything you’re able to give me.”

Hilda stifles a scoff. She doesn’t think Lilith is able to give anything at all. And if she might be able she’s probably not willing. But here she is at Zelda’s door, a peeping Tom.

She’s witnessing what shouldn’t be witnessed: an intimate confession, an airing of grievances to one’s deity. As much as she doesn’t trust this deity, she still considers her actions a violation. Hilda’s disgusted with herself, but she’s still here, still listening.

“I require direction. I need to know what to do,” Zelda’s voice says, desperate. 

Finally, Hilda can’t stand that same old desperation. She slinks back to her own bed, silently recites states and capitals alphabetically by state until she falls into a fitful sleep.

xxx

“Louisiana,” Lilith says—questioning, suggestive, seductive.

It’s not exactly Lilith’s lair in Hell as Hilda has come to know it via their previous interactions in various liminal spaces including dreamscapes, meditative hazes, and the bizarro world one inhabits in passing between death and life. It’s more like Hilda’s own solarium except off. Hot and humid, but more so than usual, stifling. Red instead of green, gray instead of brown. The blue cloudless sky on the other side of the glass panels ultra blue. Highly saturated and high contrast. It would hurt her eyes in real life. But this isn’t real life. This is somewhere Lilith has pulled her consciousness.

Hilda’s slumped in a metal patio chair in this version of what’s happening. She can feel the heat of the sun she can’t see, can smell the lush leaves of the plants that are wrong. Her senses register wonky things, but at least they’re registering things at all.

And Lilith has Mary’s likeness and is completely nude except for a pair of feathery gossamer wings that conceal and reveal in equal measure. She’s posing as a stone statue—smooth granite skin and all—at an elaborate fountain that does not actually exist in Hilda’s real greenhouse.

Hilda knows this is all artifice, but somehow she knows what Lilith is asking and is compelled to respond in her usual way:

“Baton Rouge. The tallest capitol building in the United States.”

Lilith throws her head back in laughter, and the smooth white granite shell of her crumbles into a pile at her feet and then into dust and then into nothing. She’s left as a tableau of flesh—naked and pink. She’s no longer laughing. She’s staring with her blue, blue eyes. And then she’s saying,

“Exactly right. You’re always so exactly right.”

“I might well be right. But I’d rather be done,” Hilda says.

Lilith’s hot ghostly fingertips trace Hilda’s lips. And Lilith says,

“Fat chance, sweetheart.”


End file.
